All Hail The Authoress!
by MoonlitMelody
Summary: What happens when a 15 year old girl is given complete control over the D.Gray-Man universe for a whole week? Absolute chaos, that's what! Updates are very sporadic. Sorry. ; ;
1. Prologue

What up, people? Name MoonlitMelody, Mel for short, and as you can tell, this is my first story. *throws confetti on everyone*

Anyway, I've never been confident in my abilities as a writer, but I wanted to be a Beta _really_ badly (something about editing other people's work gives me a warm, fuzzy feeling inside ^-^). Apparently the site requires people to write 5 stories or publish 6000 words before they can apply to be a Beta. NOT FAIR!!! ToT

So that's where this story comes in. In my fit of despair, a plot bunny for a super crack fic took root in my mind, and I just _had _to write it! This will be a multi-chap story where I will torture the characters in various (and hopefully hilarious)ways .

So please enjoy this prologue!

Disclaimer: Hoshino-sensei is my idol, not my employee. Therefore, I don't own D. Gray-Man. But I do own Mel, Lys, and this plot, so if you try to steal them, I'll run you over with my daddy's brand-new truck. =)

* * *

"Ow, why does my head hurt so much?" a confused girl thought aloud as she picked herself off the ground.

The girl looked just like your typical teenager; she had dark brown hair that hung just below her shoulders with matching brown eyes. Her olive complexion was pretty even except for the occasional pimple (which she adamantly denied she had), and she was of average stature. She was even wearing jeans and a cute turquoise top that she bought at Abercrombie & Fitch. She looked just like any other 15 year old American girl. Which made this situation all the more strange.

"Ok, where the hell _am_ I?!" she yelled, a hint of panic…okay, a _lot _of panic in her voice.

As far as the eye could see, there was nothing but pitch black. And not the kind that you expect on moonless nights out in the middle of nowhere. No, this was just plain, empty darkness, with no distinction between sky and ground.

Shaking from fear, the young woman got to her feet and wracked her brain for any clues as to what she was doing there.

"Let's see…last night I was invited to a party by my friend, Aya…we showed up and started dancing the Electric Slide…then Ivan challenged me to a pixie stix, coke, and cookie eating contest…" Blood rushed to the girl's cheeks as the rest of that night came back to her. _"Note to self: don't get high on sugar and caffeine, borrow somebody's pogo stick, and try to hop from the roof of the house to the Burger King down the street."_

After shaking her head to get rid of the blush on her cheeks, she let out a tired sigh. "Great, that probably means I'm in a coma at the hospital. This is just perfect. How the hell am I supposed to study for midterms now?!" she screamed into the emptiness around her, grabbing the roots of her hair in frustration.

As the teenager tried to figure out how you're supposed to wake up from a coma, a mysterious voice interrupted her.

"MoonlitMelody, great fanfic authoress of the future, you have been chosen," the voice chanted.

Not expecting the company, the girl let out a high-pitched scream and jumped a full 2 feet into the air.

"Be not afraid. I mean you no harm," the voice spoke, trying to allay the young woman's obvious fear.

However, its words were left unheard as thousands of thoughts stormed through the teenager's head. "_What's going on?! Who spoke just now? How do they know my name?"_ she frantically thought. Then a new idea popped into her head. "_Wait a minute. I woke up in an empty, black abyss with no way out, and a disembodied voice suddenly starts calling me the chosen one? That can only mean one thing..."_

To the voice's surprise, the girl's face suddenly sported a humongous, toothy grin and wide eyes with anime-style sparkles in them. Even more surprising were the words that followed said expression: "OMG, you're that all-powerful, omniscient voice that helps the heroes in all of my favorite video games! I'm a huuuuuggggeeee fan! Can I have your autograph?!" And seemingly out of nowhere, a pen and paper appear in the fangirl's outstretched hands.

The (apparently famous) voice sweatdropped at the girl's bizarre request. _"One minute she's shaking with fear, the next she's asking for my autograph."_ The voice shook its head in disbelief. _"Why do I always get the crazy ones?"_ it asked itself.

"…_and how can I sweatdrop and shake my head if I'm a disembodied voice?"_

Deciding to ponder this thought another time, the voice shook its head again and turned its attention to the still-beaming girl.

Trying to hide the annoyance in its voice, the all-knowing being said, "No, you cannot have an autograph. Especially since I have no hands with which to sign my name." At this, the girl's expression changed from absolute glee to dejected disappointment.

"Anyway," the voice continued, "MoonlitMelody, you have been –"

"Call me 'Mel'," the girl told the voice.

"What?"

"Please call me 'Mel'," the girl asked with a straight face. "MoonlitMelody is what my mom calls me," she added with a look of discomfort. However, this was quickly replaced by an expression of curiosity. "What should I call you? 'Big, awesome voice' sounds too impersonal."

"…my name is … Lys?" the voice responded.

"Ok, so Lys, why am I here?" Mel asked in an almost serious tone that caught Lys completely off guard.

"Well, you have been chosen by God himself to wield His most prized possession, the Gilded Pen. This is a great honor that is only bestowed upon the most worthy of literary geniuses every 100 years. It means that even God has seen the beauty of your work and wishes that you leave a permanent mark in the universe that He himself created so many eons ago."

Despite her best efforts to try to pay attention, Mel couldn't comprehend one thing that was coming out of Lys' non-existent mouth. She was too busy trying not to laugh at the tone in the being's voice that just screamed, "I have a Napoleon Complex. Come see how important I am and bow at my feet."

Unfortunately, Mel's efforts were in vain as she fell into a fit of hysterics at how Lys had said the word "eons."

"Ne, why are you laughing?!" the voice screamed out in a tone befitting a prom queen who had just had bug juice poured on her head. Unsurprisingly, Mel just laughed harder, rolling and pounding on the floor in an effort to regain control of her rebelling diaphragm.

After 5 long minutes of laughing, Mel finally managed to calm down. Sitting upright and wiping the tears from her eyes, she soon realized that the sound of Lys' whining had been replaced with a killer aura emanating from all sides.

Trying to sound sincere, Mel said, "Er, I am soooooo sorry about that. I don't know what came over me. Please forgive me!" This was where Mel would normally latch onto the leg of whoever she was apologizing to and cry for mercy. Realizing that she couldn't use the same strategy with a voice, she just got on her knees and cried.

"Er…" What was Lys supposed to do now? She had reduced one of God's chosen ones to tears. _"Ugh, don't even want to think about what my punishment will be if He finds out what I did,"_ she thought with a shiver. "Hey, stop crying. It's alright, I'm not that angry. See?" The voice smiled to show just how much Mel was overreacting only to realize that voices can't smile.

Even so, Mel somehow managed to pick up on the gesture, a grateful grin replacing her streams of tears.

"Good, now then, back to business...did you hear anything I said 6 minutes ago?" Lys asked in a tone that reminded the teen very much of her mother.

"O-of course!" Mel stuttered in response. Despite her obvious lack of eyes, Lys' stare somehow seemed to be focused on Mel, who was squirming uncomfortably.

After what seemed like an eternity (but was really only 15 seconds), Mel's façade cracked and she screamed, "Ok, I didn't hear a single word you said! Just STOP STARING AT ME!!!"

"I thought so," Lys said, smirking at the pout on the girl's face. "I'll tell you again, but this time, try to pay attention."

"Okay!" responded the teenager a little too enthusiastically. She sat down and stared up at the ceiling in a way that reminded Lys of a 5 year old who was being shown a piece of candy.

Resisting the urge to sweatdrop, she began a shortened version of its spiel: "You've been given an all-powerful tool called the Gilded Pen. This pen can be used to alter reality in any way you like in any fictional universe you like. It's like playing the Sims, but much more interactive. However, you only get to keep the pen for 7 days. After that, you'll be teleported back to your world. Any questions?"

After taking a minute to digest everything she had just been told, Mel responded, "So I can change anything I want in any universe I want?"

"That's right. Now, where d-"

But Lys didn't get the chance to finish as she was interrupted by an ear-shattering, "KYYYYYYAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!!!"

The bodyless being stared on in disbelief as the girl started running around in circles, flailing her arms, and screaming, "OMG! This is amazing! This is a fangirl's dream! Somebody pinch me! No wait, don't do that; if this is a dream, I don't want it to end yet!"

"Earth to Mel! Control your fangirl fit!" Lys yelled to be heard over the girl's rant.

"I'm sorry, it's just so…so…amazing," Mel sighed as stars twinkled in her eyes.

"Sure…well…here's the pen," Lys said as a bright light filled the area, forcing Mel to close her eyes. When she opened them, she found a golden quill and ink well in her hand.

"To use the Gilded Pen, all you have to do is write whatever you want to happen somewhere, and your words will become fictional law," Lys said in her haughty, Napoleon voice.

"Um?"

"What?"

"… I don't like writing with old fashioned pens," Mel admitted while staring at her shoes; she was too embarrassed to look Lys in the face (not that she had a face, but you get the idea). "Whenever I use them, I spill all the ink on my pants." Now a blush graced Mel's cheeks as her embarrassment rose.

Lys groaned. "I swear, no one knows how to use a real pen anymore. It's disgraceful!" She started rubbing her temples and muttering something about "kids these days." After regaining her composure, Lys chanted some Latin incantation, another bright light shone, and a solid gold laptop laid where the pen once was.

"Wow, is this real gold?!" Mel asked as she examined the yellow object in her hands.

"Yep. And as a bonus, you get to keep the laptop (minus the magical powers) when the week is over. You don't mind laptops, do you?"

"Of course not!" Mel exclaimed. She was as happy as a kid in a candy store until…

"Holy fudge, it's a Mac?!" Now she was as happy as a kid in Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory.

"Okay, so now you have the equipment. To use the Mac's powers, open the "iAuthor" program. I'll let you decide where you want to go. Oh, and I'll be accompanying you to make sure you don't destroy the space-time continuum or something stupid like that," Lys added.

"M'kay," Mel said as she turned on her Mac. _"Hmmm, where should I go?" _the teen mentally questioned.

"_Oh, I know…"_ A smile spread across Mel's face at her latest idea, but it wasn't the stupid one she was wearing before during her fangirl moment. This one screamed "evil fangirl; approach at your own risk".

"_Now I can finally visit my fav manga location of all time: the Black Order."_

* * *

So, did you like it? Hate it? Stunned speechless by it? I'll take any and all responses, so please review!

Sorry about the length of the prologue. I didn't want to make it into 2 chapters and…well…yeah...

Chapter 1 is already in the works, and it _will_ have the D. Gray-Man cast in it. THIS I SWEAR!!! *strikes epic pose*

And fyi, this story is completely un-beta'd and is being posted directly from my laptop. Afterall, if I can't publish a decent story by myself, how can I help somebody else publish theirs?


	2. And so it begins

Lys: Mel, what are you doing?

Mel: *skipping through a field of flowers* I am expressing my love for the world!

Lys:…why?

Mel: I got two reviews! And no flames!! And an alert!!!

Lys: You actually got reviews? For this lame crack-fic?

*shrinks under Mel's killer glare*

Um … good job? b^^;

Mel: *smiles at Lys* *faces audience* I hope you all remember that I don't own -Man in any way, shape, or form. Now, onto Chapter 1!

* * *

"Ah, what a beautiful day!" said a certain red-headed bookman-to-be as he walked down one of the Black Order's many halls. It was a well known fact that Lavi was a morning person, usually waking up at 5 just to read in the library (despite his complaints every time Bookman forced him to study or write reports, Lavi was a chronic bookworm). Now it was 7, and all of the finders who were awake this early made sure to walk in the opposite direction the exorcist was headed. It wasn't because they were trying to avoid Lavi himself; it was just that the mischievous grin on Lavi's face seemed to scream "take cover".

Sure enough, the teen turned left and started walking towards the Order's brand new, state-of-the-art training rooms. He stopped just outside the room as he waited for his "prey" to stop swinging his sword at invisible targets. When the coast was clear, Lavi pounced.

"Yuuuuuuu-chaaaaaaan, gooooood moooorrrrrniiiinnnnggggg!" he screamed as he grabbed a very unprepared samurai around the waist. The red-head stayed there for a surprisingly long amount of time, apparently unaware of the murderous aura growing around him until…

"BAKA USAGI! YOU. WILL. DIE!!!" And so, their daily game of "Catch the Rabbit" began.

* * *

"_I must not laugh. I must not laugh. But why the hell do they always have to be so damn funny?!"_ He covered his mouth with his hands, trying not to make any sounds that would compromise his position. After all, if he was caught, it would be off with his head.

This was one of the unspoken rules of "Catch the Rabbit". Lavi ran; Kanda followed and tried to chop Lavi up into bite-sized pieces. The game ended when one of 3 scenarios was reached: 1) Kanda actually caught Lavi and caused serious bodily harm, 2) one of the two exorcists was immediately called away to Komui's office for a mission assignment, or 3) Kanda became "distracted" and stopped chasing Lavi.

The red head had managed to fulfill the requirements for scenario 3 by making a small detour. Hiding in one of the Order's many secret passageways, he watched as Kanda continued running full speed down the hallway…

…straight into a very drowsy Allen.

"Oi, moyashi, move!"

"My name's not moyashi, Bakanda! It's Allen!"

Now that he was safely out of harm's way, Lavi didn't know what he thought was funnier: Allen's bad luck at having been tackled by Kanda so early in the morning, the glares the two exorcists were giving each other, or the sound of an empty coffee tray colliding with their heads and a green-haired girl berating them for fighting in the halls.

After 5 minutes of mental holding his breath, the junior bookman thought he was going to die from hypoxia. Luckily for him, Lenalee decided to escort the boys to the cafeteria, and Lavi was free to release all of his pent-up laughter. None of the finders even batted an eyelash at the sight of the rabbit rolling on the floor while clutching his stomach, and a few scientists took out stopwatches to see how long he could keep it up without taking a breath.

Finally, the bookman decided he was going to expire from starvation if he didn't head down to the cafeteria. As he headed off in the direction his friends had gone earlier, the scientists looked down at their stopwatches.

8 minutes even. A new record.

* * *

Breakfast was much calmer (or, if you asked Lavi, more boring) than what had preceded it. Allen and Kanda had silently agreed to sit at opposite ends of the dining table to avoid fighting with each other and earning a kick from a pair of very painful boots. Allen's giant, 15 foot-tall mountain of food served to further separate the two exorcists.

Lenalee and Lavi were busy talking over their pancakes about how few missions they'd gotten over the past couple of weeks (all of the exorcists were in the main building, even Cross) when a bright light suddenly flashed above their heads. The light was quickly followed by screaming and a loud thud as something crashed into the teenagers' table, the force of the impact threatening to topple a certain exorcist's edible mountain.

The "something" let out a low groan and a barely audible "Get off me" as it moved to reveal a dazed Road Camelot and an uncommonly disheveled Tyki Mikk.

Silence pervaded the cafeteria until…

"ALLEN!" A now hyper Road somehow managed to untangle herself from her uncle and glomp the mortified exorcist so fast that she made Michael Phelps look like a turtle.

"Argh, Road, let go!" Allen shouted as he tried to peel the girl off, but to no avail; she was stuck to him like gum on the bottom of your shoe.

Until he decided to use Crown Clown.

Road rubbed the back of her head, which had been slammed into a wall thanks to a certain innocence. Pouting, she whined, "Awwwwww, Allen's so mean!"

Deciding to ignore the Noah's stupid comment and the moyashi's poorly hidden blush, Kanda spat, "What the hell do you want, Noah?"

By now, all of the exorcists had entered the cafeteria with their innocences fully invoked, and the finders had backed away from the table to avoid getting caught in the cross-fire.

"Well," Tyki calmly stated, having gotten up from the table and made his way over to where his niece was still sitting on the floor, "we don't really want anything at the moment. If this little 'visit' to your 'humble abode' was planned, no one told us."

"Yeah," Road interrupted, "one moment I was playing with Lero, the next I'm laid out like a stuffed hog on that table!"

"Right, and we're supposed to believe that?" Lavi retorted.

"Believe what you will; what we say is the truth," Tyki breezed.

"Enough of this crap!" Kanda yelled as he got into a fighting stance. "Get ready to have your *beep* handed to you, Noah!"

"Wait, why was there a beep when Kanda tried to say *beep*?" Allen asked, confused. "And why was I beeped?!" Temporarily distracted from the two Noahs standing in their midst, everyone in the Order looked around the room wondering where that sound was coming from.

Instead of finding the source, they were greeted with a "Now now, Allen, little boys shouldn't curse. This fic is rated K+, so you'd best behave yourselves."

"What the *beep*?!?!" Kanda shouted, swinging Mugen around as he tried to determine the voice's location.

"Kanda, what a dirty mouth you have," the decidedly female voice teased. The comment seemed to come from nowhere and everywhere at the same time, which just pissed Kanda off even more.

"Where the *beep* are you? Show yourself you *beeping beep*! And stop that *beeping* beeping!!!"

The fuming exorcist got a short giggle as a response to his…colorful use of the English language. "Well if you must know, I'm up here." Everyone was slightly startled as the voice now seemed to be coming from a single place instead of emanating from the entire ceiling. Turning their heads towards the noise, they were greeted with the sight of a strange brunette girl sitting like a queen on a throne. The mood was ruined, however, by the fact that her "throne" was Allen's mostly-untouched mountain of food.

"_Wonder if Allen's still planning on eating that,"_ Lavi pondered. _"Er, wait, now's not the time to be thinking about that…"_

Shaking his head to clear his thoughts, the junior bookman looked up at the girl (who he judged to be about 15) and said in his most polite voice, "Why hello there! If I may ask, who you are, and why are you here?" He figured everyone else in the Order was still too startled to ask what needed to be asked, so he might as well do it.

The girl's face brightened at the pleasant tone in Lavi's voice. Smiling, she answered just as politely, "My name is MoonlitMelody (Mel for short), and I've come here to make you all my personal play-things for the next week. Won't that be fun?"

Mel's small smile didn't waver as silence once again took hold of the Order.

It also didn't waver as Kanda decided to break that silence. "What the *beep* are you talking about?!" he shouted, his ever-present scowl deepening when he realized she had been the one beeping out all of his "colorful language" with a handy little gizmo. The girl didn't answer his question; she just started laughing at the (what she considered) hilarious look on his face.

"Oh for the love of…Stop that, you idiot!" Suddenly, Mel let out a little yelp as she grabbed the back of her head; it was as if somebody had smacked her there.

"That huuurt, Lys!~" Mel whined.

Ignoring the girl, a new voice addressed the crowd below. "Exorcists, Noahs, Finders, and assorted Dark Order staff, please excuse this idiot girl's behavior." At this, Mel let out a small "hey", which was also ignored. "I'll be more than happy to explain the situation to you all if you'll give me your full attention for 5 minutes."

"Hold up, who are you?" This time, Lenalee decided to ask the obvious question.

"Pardon me, where are my manners?" The movement of wings caught everyone's eye as what appeared to be a white and pink puffball fluttered up from behind Mel's head.

Upon closer inspection, the puffball appeared to be a golem, but instead of the usual black and white, this golem was a cotton candy pink. A tuft of white fuzz adorned its head, and black bat wings were replaced by translucent pink butterfly wings. It had a tail just like Timcanpy's, and a huge set of violet eyes completed the look.

The adorable golem continued to hover over the girl's head as the voice from before continued: "My name is Lys. It's a pleasure to meet you all, and I apologize for any trouble we've caused you."

It took all of half a second for everyone in the room, Mel included, to realize that the woman's voice was coming from the big-eyed creampuff.

And it took another half a second for the cafeteria to erupt into laughter.

Lys stared on in horror as the entire room laughed at her. And I mean the _entire_ room. Even Miranda, Maire, Krory, and Kanda were holding their sides to keep from collapsing like Lavi and Allen had. And Maire couldn't even _see_ what Lys looked like; why the hell was _he_ laughing?!

Sensing the growing rage above her head, Mel stopped laughing and tried to calm the crowd below her. Too bad they were laughing too hard to hear her pleas.

But they weren't too loud to drown out Lys.

"SILENCE, YOU MORTAL FOOLS!" Lys shouted in her "big" voice. "I am the right hand servant of God himself! If you do not stop your infernal racket this instant, I will have you all dragged down to the seventh level of hell by your pinkie toes! Do I make myself clear?!"

She took terrified eyes and the cowering in corners as a yes.

"Now then," she began in a more normal tone, "we have come to your world as a kind of reward for Mel. You see, she has been chosen to wield the Gilded Pen, a tool that allows her to control everything around her for seven days. As a huge fan of this … establishment, she has chosen to spend her week here. Are there any questions?" Lys finished with a smile (or the equivalent of a smile since she still had no mouth).

"Yes, I have a couple," Tyki said while stepping towards the front of the crowd. As a Noah, the sudden outburst from the pink golem hadn't scared him into cowering in a corner, but even he had to admit the woman was scary when she wanted to be.

"Were you the one who dropped me and Road on that table earlier?"

"Actually, that was Mel," Lys said pointing at the girl who was still sitting on the pile of lukewarm food. Mel only chuckled and rubbed the back of her head in response.

"_Should have seen that coming,"_ Tyki mumbled to himself. "Does that mean we're all stuck here for a week to entertain you?"

"Aw, Tyki, it won't be _that_ bad," Mel whined. "I won't force you to do anything that would endanger your physical wellbeing," she finished with a dazzling smile.

"So you're going to torture us mentally?"

"That's right."

Even Tyki shivered as the teen's evil laughter filled the room. This next week promised to be hell on earth for all involved parties (except Mel).

* * *

Lys: What the hell?! Why am I a flying pink creampuff?!?!

Mel: That's what you get for calling my fic lame! XP

Lys: *fumes*

Mel: Anyway, special thanks to Candyone11 and Zack1996 for their words of encouragement. I don't feel this chapter was as good as the prologue, but nobody's perfect, right? ^^;

Updates should come within a week of the last post, so stay tuned. As always, I live to read your reviews, so don't be stingy; just press the button right below this sentence and leave a couple of words. Anonymous reviewers are welcome as well.

Now I'm off to my lair to figure out how to torture the Order! *runs to bedroom and locks door*


	3. Day 1: Lotus Raid

Mel: *headdesk*

Lavi: What's wrong with Mel?

Lys: She's annoyed because she has to read _The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn_ as part of her summer reading.

Mel: *headdesk* *headdesk*

Lavi: That doesn't sound that bad.

Lys: Yes, but she has to read another book after that by September 1st.

Mel: *headdesk*

Lavi: But isn't it supposed to be a great American Classic? Why would she compl-

Mel: Because it's BORING AS HELL!!! *MEGA HEADDESK*  
Ow, now I need an aspirin. T_T

Anyway, I decided to update _Authoress_ earlier than usual to take my mind off of a certain book. *glares at copy of _Huck Finn_*  
Thanks to Candyone11, Zack1996, heavensblackcat, Shoten Shinzui, and smiles555fofo for your reviews/alerts. It warms my heart to know that people like my story enough to comment. ^-^  
(And Candyone11, if you want to be a Beta, I say go for it! The writing requirement is kind of intimidating at first, but it's actually a lot of fun! And if you do get an account, make sure to tell me so I can check it out! ^^)

Now, onto to Chapter 2!

* * *

A very tired looking creampuff sighed as she flapped her translucent wings faster to keep up with her charge and guide.

After the cafeteria incident, Lys was able to talk Komui and the Generals out of banishing Mel from the Order. Not that it was very hard; if they tried to kick her out, she would just come back in and make the rest of their week hell. And let's face it: that logic was fool-proof.

So Komui had assigned Lavi to give the girl and golem a full tour of the Order while everyone else tried to figure out how to minimize the inevitable damage that would accumulate in the next 7 days and where they were going to keep their two Noah guests (Mel refused to let Komui kick them out; she said it would be more "fun" if they stayed).

In retrospect, leaving Mel with Lavi was probably not one of the supervisor's brighter ideas. Although she wasn't well versed in DGM lore, Lys could tell from the look in his eyes that the boy was a lot like Mel. And that could only spell disaster for the poor guardian spirit.

"_Please, God, please let me be wrong this one time,"_ Lys silently prayed as the group made their way past the hospital wing.

Having not noticed her guardian's pleas to a higher power, Mel happily skipped down the long halls. No matter how many times she thought about, she still couldn't believe this was really happening. Here she was actually taking a tour of the Black Order with Lavi. It was truly a DGM fangirl's dream come true! The only thing that could make this day any better was if she pulled her first prank of the week with the Rabbit King himself.

"_Wait, that's a brilliant idea!"_

Mel shook with excitement, but she quickly hid it as she coughed to interrupt the red-head's tour guide spiel. "Hey Lavi, I'm getting kinda bored. Is there anything fun we can do around here?"

"Wah, Mel-chan thinks I'm boring?" Lavi whined with a pout on his face.

"_OMG, he is __SO __cute!" _Mel thought. Resisting the urge to squeal and glomp the teen, she replied, "Of course not! It's just that I'm only here for a week, and I want to actually do something. Know what I mean?"

"Yeah, I totally get it!" Lavi exclaimed, clearly happy that he had not been the source of her boredom. "So, what did you have in mind?"

"Oh, I don't know. What do you do for fun?" Mel asked. The boy _had_ to have a plan up his sleeve; he was Lavi, after all.

The boy touched his hand to his chin, thinking about what pranks he could pull off that would make full use of Mel's ability to break the laws of time and space. A smile crept across Lavi's face as a masterpiece of a prank made itself known to the junior bookman.

Seeing his expression, an ecstatic Mel and a worried Lys both asked him what he was thinking.

His smile only grew wider and more devious as he said, "We're going to do the impossible, the unthinkable, the one thing that not even Central would dare to do."

"And what would that be?" Lys asked. She wasn't just worried now; she was literally shaking in fear of what the boy was planning.

Lavi turned back towards the corridor, taking a couple more steps as he said, "Nothing much, really." When he looked over his shoulder as Lys, she shivered at the sight of mischievousness in his eye. "We're just going to break into good-ole Yu-chan's room!"

* * *

Maybe if she was _really_ quiet, she could sneak out without either of them seeing her. Then she could hide in some God-forsaken corner of the Order and not be found until it was time to send the crazy fangirl back home where she belonged.

And maybe she would find a leprechaun, win American Idol, and live happily ever after with a blonde Prince Charming.

"_Why is it always me who ends up in these situations?" _Lys lamented. _"This stress is going to do a number on my skin."_

She looked on helplessly as Lavi and Mel scoured the Japanese exorcist's room. Ignoring the various signs on the entrance that promised death to all who even attempted to enter, the two had used Mel's laptop to unlock the door leading to the forbidden zone. They searched in and under every piece of furniture (and there weren't many, since this is Kanda's room we're talking about), looking for anything that could possibly be construed as blackmail material.

Lys, on the other hand, floated as close to the ceiling as she could, making sure she didn't touch anything. From what she had seen of the eternally-angry exorcist and his sword, she knew she didn't want to have anything to do with the search.

Just as Lys started to imagine the torture she would face if she was captured by that man, she was interrupted by a very excited "Hey Lavi! I think I found something!"

"What did you find?!" the teen asked just as excitedly as he rushed over to look at what Mel was pointing to.

"A big, red button," she replied simply. And sure enough, there was a giant button right underneath Yu Kanda's bed.

"Nice job, Mel!" Lavi complimented as he affectionately patted the girl on the head. "Now, we just need to figure out what it does." The junior bookman turned around and walked back out into the hallway to make sure no one was on the verge of catching them red-handed in Kanda's room. "Mel, make sure not to push that button just yet. For all we know, it could be an alarm of some kind," he explained over his shoulder.

However, Lavi's unusually cautionary words didn't reach the girl's ears in time as she had already pushed the button by the time Lavi had reached the hallway.

"Oops," she mumbled. "Um Lavi…about the button…"

Before she could make her mistake known, a click was heard as a piece of the wall above the bed came loose. Both teenagers rushed up onto the bed, and even Lys flew in closer to see what had happened to the wall.

Carefully, Lavi removed the slab to reveal a little cubby, and in that cubby sat a tiny wooden chest decorated with golden lotuses.

"Jackpot!" the pair screamed. They found it: Kanda's secret stash of…something…

Mel removed the treasure from its hiding place, careful not to leave her fingerprints on any of the gold filigree. After all, she wanted to live to see tomorrow, and having one's fingerprints clearly visible at the scene of the crime was not conducive to that goal.

After placing the chest on the bed, the exorcist, girl, and golem exchanged glances before Mel slowly opened the lid of the chest to reveal…

_To Be Continued_

* * *

Weren't expecting a cliffhanger, now were you? xD

This was actually supposed to be another incredibly long chapter, but I decided to split it into two for 2 reasons:  
1) It's more dramatic this way (at least, I hope so…)  
2) I'm still trying to figure out exactly what is going to be in the box. ^^;

Which brings me to my next point. Since I have yet to finalize what shall be in Kanda's chest of treasures, I'll let my dear reviewers suggest what they want it to be. Anything will work as long as it's not illegal or obscene, so make sure to leave a comment! *points to review button*

Now I'm off to read about how Huck and Jim lost their canoe. *sarcasm* Oh joy!  
*stalks off grumbling incoherently*


	4. Day 1: Involuntary Compromise

Hey everybody!

I got a couple of suggestions for what would be in the box (photos was one of the better ones, and I ROFLed at the teddy bear idea), but in the end, I decided to stick with my original idea. Please don't take that the wrong way. *bows head*

Thanks to sloth213 for putting me on alert, and extra special thanks for Candyone11, Zack1996, and Shoten Shinzui for the suggestions. I can't believe that I actually have regular reviewers! *hugs everyone*

Disclaimer: I just realized I didn't write one for the last two chapters. Oops! ^^;  
I could say I own DGM, but then I'd be lying. ='(

Chapter 3 starts…NOW!

* * *

_After placing the chest on the bed, the exorcist, girl, and golem exchanged glances before Mel slowly opened the lid of the chest to reveal…_

* * *

_2 HOURS LATER_

* * *

"Kanda-kun, where's Allen?"

"For the 64th time, I. Don't. Know!"

"Wah, why not?"

The samurai's eye twitched as he turned around to stare at the pouting Noah. The little brat had been interrupting his training for 2 whole hours asking where the moyashi was. How the hell would he know?! He wasn't the moyashi's keeper!

"Leave me the hell alone before I shave all the hair off of your annoying head!" Kanda roared.

"Pfft, I'd like to see you try," Road teased, sticking her tongue out.

This time, Kanda's whole arm twitched as he gripped Mugen tighter. _"Damn that Komui and his stupid orders."_

* * *

_FLASHBACK_

"_Now remember, everyone," Komui said in his rare, serious voice, "no one is allowed to attack the Noahs for the rest of the week unless they attack first. They're going to be stuck here for a while, and I would rather not have to deal with half of the Order being destroyed on a daily basis."_

_Komui turned around to glare directly at Kanda. "Am I clear, Kanda-kun?"_

_END FLASHBACK_

* * *

"_Che, I __hate__ ceasefires,"_ Kanda thought as he tried to ignoring the twittering coming from behind him. It was obvious now that he wouldn't be able to get anywhere in terms of training with the Noah brat hanging around. Sheathing Mugen, he walked out of the training room into the corridor that led to the cafeteria.

To Kanda's chagrin, Road skipped after him, humming some infernal tune that reminded him of nails on a chalkboard (Kanda was never one for music…).

Following the exorcist around and bugging him proved to be a surprisingly good form of entertainment for the bright little girl. She could see why that boy with the hammer liked to mess with him.

"_This would be so much more fun if Tyki didn't make me promise not to 'play' with any of the humans,"_ Road thought. _"Oh well. I guess this will have to do."_

Just as Road was about to run up and start braiding Kanda's ponytail, a flash of white further down the hall caught her attention.

"AAAALLLLLEEEEENNNNN, I FOOOOUUUUNNNDDD YOOOOOOOUUUUUU!" Needless to say, Kanda was soon liberated of his pest as she belted down the hall to glomp her new target.

Smirking, Kanda continued his journey to the cafeteria for his daily serving of soba noodles. However, he stopped when he heard his name and snickering.

The finder responsible let out a terrified yelp as Mugen suddenly appeared half an inch from his neck. "What's so funny, rat?" he hissed at the man.

"No-no-nothing, Exorcist-sama. Nothing at all." The man's knees shook violently as he tried to remain upright in front of the samurai.

Deciding that a mere finder wasn't worth the effort, Kanda "che"ed as he sheathed Mugen. But before he could continue his walk, he heard another finder whisper, "You're right, Jon, there's no way Kanda-san could have written _that_."

Now it was the second finder who found himself facing Mugen's very shiny edge. "What did you just say?" the Japanese teen said through gritted teeth.

"Um…uh…I…he…"

"Spit it out, you bumbling buffoon!"

"Someone was selling copies of a book over in the cafeteria and I bought one and they said it was written by you and please don't kill me!!!" the finder blurted out as fast as he could.

"What book?" Kanda said, his eyes narrowing to mere slits.

Clearly shaken, the finder reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a medium sized, paperback book. The book's cover was a lilac purple color with what looked like golden lotuses blooming on it.

Kanda snatched the book from the man's quivering hand and observed the cover. His eyes widened to the size of saucers as he frantically opened the book and flipped through the pages. To say he was panicking was an understatement.

And then, just as quickly as the panic had come, it vanished.

Without saying a word, Kanda handed the book back to the finder and walked ever so calmly down the hallway to the cafeteria. He took no notice of the fearful looks all of the passing finders gave him.

For once, they weren't scared because of the scowl on his face.

They were scared because he _wasn't_ scowling.

* * *

"OMG, Lavi, this was a great idea!" Mel exclaimed. "We're rich, filthy, stinking rich!" To emphasize her point, she scooped up an insanely large number of $10 bills in her arms.

"Oh please, none of this would be possible without you, Mel," Lavi complimented as he sold another copy of their new best-seller.

"Aw, stop it," she replied with a blush. "You're gonna make my head swell."

"But seriously, who would've thought that we'd find Kanda's _diary_ in the _wall_?" the boy questioned as he flipped through the pages of one of the books.

When they had first found the diary in the chest hidden in Kanda's wall, the two pranksters had no idea what to do with it. Mel wanted to trade it for Mugen and auction the sword off when she got back home; with all the Kanda fans in the world, she could probably make enough to make Bill Gates look like a hillbilly. But Lavi figured that they could make twice that and embarrass Kanda much more by making copies of the diary and selling them for $10 a piece in the Black Order. And it didn't hurt that Mel's laptop could spontaneously produce 1,000 copies a second. Now everyone was either in the cafeteria reading their masterpiece or standing in line in front of their makeshift bookstand to buy a copy.

"I know! And who knew he wrote such weird stuff!" Grabbing the first copy off of the top of the pile, Mel flipped through to read one of her favorite entries.

**"Dear Diary,**

**This morning was super fantabulous!**

**I had soooooooooo much fun chasing Usagi-chan before breakfast. But why won't he ever let me catch him? All I want to do is give him a biiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiig hug! And maybe play with his hair. He has such gorgeous hair! It's, like, such a nice red! *squeal***

**But before I could catch him, I accidentally ran into Moyashi-chan. It was soooooo hard not to blush! Our noses were practically touching! OMG!!! ^o^**

**That reminds me, I need to find a decent recipe for Mitarashi Dango. Maybe I can surprise Moyashi-chan with a plate. He always looks so cute when he's eating! =D "**

"That's one of my favorite passages!" the junior bookman said as he peeled himself off the floor. No matter how many times he read through the book (and in 2 hours, he had managed to read it 5 times), he was always reduced to rolling on the floor and crying by the distinctly fangirl language.

However, his wasn't laughing when he hit the floor next.

"Argh, Johnny, what was that for?"

The small blonde scientist with huge glasses immediately got up after running into the red-head and tried to speak, but his ragged breathing prevented him from forming any intelligible words.

"Calm down, Johnny," Mel said as she walked over to the boys. Patting him on the back, she instructed, "Take your time. Catch your breath first."

The blonde didn't take her advice, though. He kept trying to make words as he flailed his arms over his head in a panic. Finally, he was able to wheeze, "Kanda-sama … is coming … this way."

"Oh crap! He's probably gonna hack our head off," Lavi exclaimed. "Johnny, exactly how angry was he?" He needed to come up with a decent escape plan for him and Mel, and he needed one NOW!

"That's the…thing… he…didn't look…angry…at all...in fact…he seemed…calm…"

"Whoa, back up and freeze. Did you just say Kanda, _the_ Kanda, the samurai who has eternal PMS, was _calm?!_" Mel asked unbelievingly.

Having given up on talking, Johnny simply nodded his head.

Before Mel or Lavi could ask anything else of their de-facto informant, the whole cafeteria went silent. Reluctantly, the two turned around to see a black-haired male with midnight blue eyes walking towards them. Despite the primal instinct to run and hide from the probably furious-beyond-all-description samurai, no one moved a muscle.

They all watched in awe as Kanda walked right up to Lavi, looked around at all the books in the room, turned back to face Lavi, and said in a calm, sickeningly sweet voice, "Lavi-kun, why does everyone seem to have a copy of my diary?"

You could hear the thud that came from Lavi's jaw making contact with the floor.

Meanwhile, Mel stared on in horror. _"What the hell?!"_ she thought, _"He's being __nice__?! Good lord, I think…I think we just __broke__ Kanda! This is bad. We didn't come up with a plan to handle __this__!!!"_

Thinking on her feet, the girl climbed on top of the table they had been using as a book stand and shouted, "Hey, Kanda! I have something to show you!"

The exorcist turned on his heel to face the girl. "Mel-chan, can I help you with something?" he asked as he smiled at her.

Yes, your eyes are not deceiving you right now. Kanda _smiled_. Not smirked; not grimaced; not even grinned. He _smiled_, showing all 32 bright, white teeth.

Somewhere deep inside her mind, Mel's inner fangirl was suffering from cardiac arrest while screaming, _"He's so HOT!"._

Mel, however, shivered. _"Oh crap, he's gonna kill me,"_ she thought as she tried to gather her courage.

There was only one way to save herself now.

"Before you do anything rash, maybe you should see these!" From seemingly out of nowhere, Mel pulled out a handful of documents written on fancy parchment.

"Why, what are those?" Kanda asked in a freakishly polite tone.

"Why, these are the papers that I discovered in the _false bottom_ of your chest Kanda-kun."

The girl smirked as she saw how the Japanese man paled at the mention of his _real _hiding place.

"You wouldn't dare." Kanda's voice now resembled a low rumble as his usual scowl returned, his eyes smoldering with unrestricted rage.

"Oh, but I would." Mel smirked. She had the upper-hand now. They both knew it.

"…what do you want?"

"_Bingo."_

Using the papers in her hand as a makeshift fan, Mel sat down on the table and relaxed, swinging her legs over the edge. "Well, for starters, I want you to promise not to touch anyone involved in this little incident. That includes me, Lavi, and any of our patrons." Smirking at Kanda's look of disgust, she continued, "Also, you are forbidden from destroying any of the copies of _The Lotus Diaries_. Everyone paid good money for these books; you should respect their property."

"Anything else?" The samurai's eye was twitching violently as he tried to remain civil; losing his temper now was _not_ an option.

"Hmm, can't think of anything now. I'll let you know if I come up with anything later, 'kay?" Mel replied cutely. "Oh, I almost forgot!" Again, she pulled what looked like a pink and purple hardcover book from out of nowhere. "Here's your diary back!" She held it out to Kanda with both hands.

He huffed, snatched it back, and stormed out of the cafeteria to go find something/someone he could rip to pieces. Mel just smiled at his retreating form, satisfied in her own quick thinking.

As soon as Kanda was gone, the cafeteria sprung back to life. Mel found herself the target of a lot of "Congratulations" and "Good Jobs" as all the finders applauded her bravery in the face of such a terrifying sight.

Two finders suddenly fell to the floor as a certain rabbit climbed over them to reach his partner-in-crime. "Mel, that was brilliant!" he screamed as he grabbed both her hands. "You handled that with such finesse! By the way, what were those papers you were threatening Yu-chan with? I don't remember seeing them."

"That's a secret!~" Mel teased as she let go of Lavi's hands.

"Aw, but Mel-chan!" the boy whined. "I want to know!" He gave his best puppy-dog pout in an effort to make her give in.

"No can do, Lavi," the girl replied. "If I told you, then Kanda would have a valid excuse to skewer us all with Mugen."

"But-"

"No 'buts'." And with that, the argument was closed. "Now, I'm going to go hide these in a place where _no one_ will be able to get to them," Mel said as she exited the cafeteria.

"Fine, I never really wanted to know anyway!" Lavi yelled at her it a bratty tone.

* * *

LATER THAT NIGHT…

* * *

Mel smiled to herself as she heard yet another temper tantrum coming from the room next-door.

"Lavi, if only you knew…" She giggled as she heard something break and a certain old panda yell, "Idiot apprentice!"

She decided then and there that she'd tell Lavi what she had found in Kanda's chest.

…eventually…

* * *

Mel: So what was hidden in Kanda's chest besides the diary? I'll tell you all about it…in the last chapter. ;)

Lavi: What?! I have to wait until the last chapter to find out?!?! Are you trying to kill me or something?!?!?!

Mel: **SILENCE!**

Lavi: *cowers in corner*

Mel: If you want to find out what I found, make sure to stick around long enough to read the next chapter. I promise this story won't get any longer than 15 chapters. It probably won't even reach the 10 chapter mark!

Remember, the more reviews I get, the harder I'll work to upload new chapters. So review! ^o^

And on a side note, sorry if the layout of this chapter confused anyone. I'm bad with time skips. ^^;


	5. Day 2: The Order’s Next Top Model

Sorry I took so much longer to post than normal. A random plot bunny attacked me out of nowhere, and while I was trying to fight back, my inspiration for this chapter flew out the window, so I had to go catch it with a butterfly net. Let me tell you, it is _not_ easy to catch an abstract concept with a butterfly net. X_x

Thanks to Candyone11, sloth213, Shoten Shinzui, Karoomy-chan, Yatsuki, Mitarashii Dango, and Iruchi-chan for all the reviews and alerts. I never expected to get so many at once! =D

Also, special thanks to my mom, who's actually following this story and giving me advice. It takes a very special parent to appreciate a fic about a fangirl gone wild. ^^

Disclaimer: If I owned DGM, chocolate-covered strawberries would be falling from the sky.

Chapter 4, Take 2: ACTION!

* * *

There was a "bang" as the double doors to the cafeteria swung open and slammed into the walls behind them. A grinning Mel skipped into the cafeteria for lunch after spending the whole morning locked in her room.

Walking over to the table where the non-general exorcists were sitting, she grabbed a glass and tapped it with a fork like you see rich people do when they're giving a toast. "Everyone, listen up! I have fabulous news!"

Even though she had only been there for a day, the residents of the Order were already getting familiar with how Mel worked. One thing that was quickly apparent was that "fabulous news" was usually not that "fabulous" for anyone that was unfortunate enough to become involved. Just look at what happened to Kanda.

Despite everyone's apprehensions, the cafeteria fell silent to listen to the girl's announcement. "I've decided," she said, "to not do anything to anyone using the Gilded Pen for the rest of the day."

She smiled at the cheers and sighs of relief that followed.

And she smiled even wider when they stopped after she said, "I've decided to wait until tonight!"

"Could Allen Walker, Komui Lee, Lenalee Lee, Yu Kanda, Arystar Krory III, Miranda Lotto, Road Camelot, Tyki Mikk, Reever Wenhamm, and Lavi please meet me in the Supervisor's office? Thanks!" With that, she skipped back out into the hallway, leaving 6 exorcists, 2 Noahs, and 2 Order officials speechless.

Then Mel ran back into the cafeteria and stood in line for the food that she forgot to order in the course of her dramatic address. Which left the 6 exorcists, 2 Noahs, and 2 Order officials sweatdropping.

* * *

"I'm sorry, can you repeat that?" Reever asked.

"I said we're going to have a fashion show!" Mel was practically glowing with pride at her brilliant idea.

"And why are we doing a fashion show?" This time it was Kanda that asked, and he didn't sound happy (then again, he's never really "happy").

"Because you guys are always wearing your Exorcist coats and I want to see what you look like in other types of clothes," she explained.

"But what about me and Tyki?" Road asked. "We don't wear uniforms."

"I know, but you guys are always wearing formal European or, in Road's case, gothic Lolita clothes. It gets boring after a while, know what I mean?"

"No, not really," Tyki deadpanned.

Ignoring Tyki, Mel went on to explain how the fashion show would be set up. Because it would take a while to set up everything for the show, they would only have time for 4 models.

"So you guys will draw straws to decide who goes!" the girl finished enthusiastically as she pulled out 10 striped drinking straws. "Whoever gets one of the 4 short straws will get to go onstage."

Seeing no other way out of the situation, the gang started picking their straws. Miranda picked first, followed by Krory and Road. Luckily for them, all their straws were long. Allen and Tyki weren't so lucky.

"Haha, Tyki-pon and Allen have to play dress up!" Road teased. The exorcist and Noah just hung their heads in dejection as they sulked over their fate.

Next to choose was Lenalee, who picked a long straw, and Komui, who picked a long straw with an orange tip.

"O, that means Komui gets to be my co-host!" Mel explained as everyone wondered what the orange meant.

Reever chose his straw next, and to his great dismay, it was short.

"But I'm not even an exorcist!" he whined. "This isn't fair!"

"Better luck next time, Reever," Lavi said merrily as he went up to pick his straw. Since there were only two straws left, one short and one long, his would be the last drawing.

Lavi chose the long straw.

No one could tell what was scarier: the evil grin on Mel's face or the murderous aura surrounding Kanda.

"_This is going to get ugly; I just know it,_" Komui thought as he wiped the sweat from his brow.

* * *

A ticked-off pink golem mumbled to herself as she made her way to the men's-washroom-turned-dressing-room. Outside she caught sight of Mel, who seemed to be talking to Miranda.

"Oi, the stage is set up, Miss Deranged Fangirl," Lys sneered.

"Thanks so much for telling me, Miss Flying Creampuff," Mel rebutted. Irked at the reference to her current pink and fluffy state, Lys flew off down the corridor with a huff.

Smirking, Mel turned around and addressed the German woman. "So, Miranda, how are the models doing?"

"Well, we're having some problems convincing everyone to put on their outfits " she said as she looked at her shoes. Sure enough, muttered shouts, thuds, and crashes could be heard from behind the closed door of the washroom/dressing room.

Mel sighed as she reached up to rub her temples. "I'll go handle them. Just go check the mikes or something," she said exasperatedly as she walked into the dressing room.

"O-Okay," Miranda stuttered as she turned to walk towards the assembly hall only to trip over her own feet for the 16th time that day.

* * *

Komui glanced around at the now-packed assembly hall awestruck. It didn't even look like an assembly hall anymore. Swaths of blue and purple silk hung from the ceilings, coordinating beautifully with the silk curtains the shrouded the glass-topped stage. Extending from the stage was a matching 15-foot catwalk, on the end of which the two hosts were now standing. And all of this was manufactured in 5 just minutes using the Gilded Pen and Mel's freakishly fast typing skills. "Mel-chan, I'm impressed! This looks amazing!" he exclaimed. "Oh, and you look great in that dress.

"Aw, thanks so much." She blushed at the compliment. It had taken her hours to decide on which dress she was going to wear that night, and she was afraid that the red silk strapless dress she had on was too racy for 19th century Europe. Of course, it had only taken her all of 5 seconds to decide that Komui had to wear a black tux with a matching black beret and red silk tie for his role as co-host.

"And how did you ever get the guys to agree to the whole thing?" the Chinese man asked. "I heard from Miranda that they were causing quite a ruckus before."

"I'm just a really good negotiator is all," was Mel's nonchalant response, but judging from the evil chuckle that followed, negotiating wasn't the only thing that happened in that dressing room.

Deciding not to tread into uncharted, potentially life threatening waters, Komui said, "Well, let's get started then."

"Okay!" Mel picked up the microphones from where they lay on the ground and turned them on. She handed one off to Komui, and said into the other, "Everyone, settle down please. We're about to start."

The audience, which was everyone in the Order other than those modeling, stopped talking and turned their attention to the teen. Having all eyes on her, she continued talking: "I'd like to welcome you all to the first ever Black Order Fashion Show! I'm Melody!"

"And I'm Komui!" the man beside her piped in.

"And we'll be your hosts for this evening's fabulous show. We've got a great lineup tonight, so let's start things off with a bang. Please give it up for our first model, Mr. Tyki Mikk!"

Everyone snickered as Tyki came into view from behind the curtain and made his way to the end of the catwalk. Denim overalls worn over a red and white checkered shirt with old leather work boots gave the illusion that Tyki had just flown in from the deep American South. He even had that piece of yellow grass they always have in their mouths.

"I hate the world so much right now," he mumbled to himself as stood exposed in-between Komui and Mel.

"Eh, what was that Mister Mikk?" the girl asked politely.

After sighing, the man cleared his throat and said in his best southern accent, "I said I'm ever so glad y'all gave me such a swell outfit. It's mighty comfortable."

The snickering in the room erupted into laughter with Road's being the most audible of all.

"I'm glad you're comfortable, Tyki," Mel said with a smile. "You can go now, if you want."

"Thanks," Tyki said sarcastically in his regular voice as he walked towards the back of the stage.

After he recovered from his bout of laughter, Komui announced, "Next up we have our very own Allen-kun!"

If the crowd had been laughing at Tyki's get-up, they were cracking up at Allen's.

The boy walked out with a beet red face and a baby blue leotard complete with silver sequins and rhinestones. His snow white hair, which had been artificially lengthened with some of Komui's hair tonic, was tied up in a low ponytail down his back, and his normal shoes had been swapped out for silver ballet flats. The only redeeming quality about the get-up was that the exorcist hadn't been forced to wear a tutu with the leotard; he only had to wear the matching tights.

"Don't you look dashing, Allen-kun?" Komui teased as he observed Allen's ever-deepening blush.

"Why do I have to wear something so girly?" he complained as he tried to ignore the people pointing and chuckling.

"Girly?!" Mel screamed. "Allen-kun, the men that wear these things on a regular basis are strong enough to lift women above their heads and hold them there with _one hand_. You should be honored!" she finished with a wave of her arms.

"Still, this isn't exactly comfortable…" the boy muttered as he pulled on his tights.

"It's made of spandex," Mel said with a shrug. "What do you expect?"

"Something that breathes?" Allen suggested, his voice dripping with sarcasm.

Ignoring Allen's comment, Mel said into the mike, "One last round of applause for Allen Walker!"

Sighing, the exorcist made his way back up and offstage as the crowd attempted to quell their laughing.

"Mel, you've chosen some very interesting pieces for tonight," Komui commented with a smirk.

Mel replied, "Komui, if you think Tyki and Allen's duds were good, just wait until you see our next model. Give it up for our resident Science Department Head, Reever!"

Silence followed as everyone looked towards the back of the stage where Reever was supposed to enter from. Instead of seeing the blonde man walk out, they heard a "I'm not going out there! I don't care what Mel will do to me; I'll take the punishment. Just don't send me out there!" and the sounds of a short struggle. Evidently, Reever lost the struggle, as he was pushed onto the stage by an unseen person.

The audience fell to the floor in hysterics at the sight of the scientist. It seemed that as the show progressed, the outfits the models were being forced to wear became ever more embarrassing.

For Reever, that meant appearing in front of all his coworkers in a red Speedo. Nothing more, nothing less.

"Oh, Reever, how far you have fallen," Komui lamented as he tried to contain his laughter.

"You act like I _chose _this! This is humiliating!!! Why am I the only one that's half-naked?!?!" the man screamed at the two hosts.

"Because Reever-san reminds me so much of one of those blond, buff lifeguards that shows up in every American movie set on the beach." Surprisingly, there wasn't any sarcasm to be heard in Mel's voice.

"Yes, he's _very _buff." But there was plenty in Komui's voice.

"Can it, Komui!" Reever yelled. He was livid now; if he had an innocence, he would've kicked the Supervisor into next year.

But since he had none, he was forced to swallow his pride and strut back to the stage entrance, listening to all of the whistles being thrown his way.

Calling everyone's attention back to herself, Mel exclaimed, "Now get ready everyone; it's time for the grand finale! We've saved the best for last. Hold onto your hats and welcome to the stage Yu Kanda!"

This time there wasn't any laughter. Everyone's mouths hung open as they took in the sight of Yu Kanda wearing the most humiliating outfit of all: a bright pink kimono decorated with purple and silver butterflies and matching hair clips.

It all looked very out of place on the samurai, who was staring the crowd down, silently daring them to laugh. Since Mugen was still strapped to the exorcist's hip (even Mel didn't have the guts to take away Mugen), no one took the dare.

Except for a red-headed bunny.

"Yu-chan, you look absolutely stunning!" he screamed from the other side of the room.

Mel and Komui sweatdropped as Lavi climbed over the heads of numerous finders to get to the stage. When he finally reached where the three of them were standing, the teen pulled out a little box from his pocket.

He walked over to where Kanda was standing, dropped down on one knee, and opened the box to reveal a glittering silver and diamond ring. To everyone's shock, he looked up at the samurai and asked, "Will you marry me?"

All the men in the room (excluding Kanda and Lavi) gasped while all the women cheered and shouted "So cute!" The red-head ignored their reactions as he looked up expectantly at Kanda. No one could see Kanda's face because his bangs were covering his eyes, but the tensing of his shoulders and the gripping of Mugen's hilt was enough of a warning for Mel, Komui and everyone else to get out of striking range before-

"**BAKA USAGI!!!**"

Lavi leapt away as fast as lightning as Kanda drew his blade and slashed where the red-head had been moments before. The room erupted into cacophony as a very dangerous version of "Catch the Rabbit" took root.

Avoiding the running patrons and stray slices, Mel hastily said into the mike, "Well, that concludes tonight's show. Thanks ever so much for watching. Drive home safely!" Then she screamed, "GAH, NO! Kanda, don't cut that cable! That's what's holding up the stage-"

**CRASH!**

"…lights."

* * *

Do I have great fashion sense or what? ;D

You guys know the drill. Everyone who comments gets virtual mitarashii dango cookies as a present, and people who give constructive criticism get baka usagi cookies, too! ^o^


	6. Day 3: In Someone Else's Shoes

Whoa. O_O  
Okay, so while I was outlining this chapter, I got a review from cottoncandycosmo suggesting the _exact same_ idea. Dude, are you, like, psychic or something?  
That reminds me of the time I was playing charades in Chemistry class. My partner got stuck on a word, so I randomly screamed out "Absolute Zero!" I was right and we beat the rest of the class. O_O

But I digress. Thanks to Starfur, ImaTurnari, cottoncandycosmo, Shoten Shinzui, Iruchi-chan, Candyone11, Karoomy-chan, and for your reviews, alerts, and favs. You made my week! ^-^

Disclaimer: Kanda, Tyki, Allen, and Reever should consider themselves lucky that I don't own -Man. Especially Kanda. ;3

Oh, and just to clarify, the story starts right after the fashion show (end of Day 2).

Chapter 5 starts in 5...4...3...2...1...0!

* * *

Click………click………clickity-click-click…

A loud yawn echoed throughout the room as a pair of purple eyes fluttered open. She could tell without looking at the clock that it was already really late, but she checked anyway just to be sure. The digital display read 1:17am.

Click-click.

"Oi, what are you doing still up?" she asked the source of the sleep-disturbing clicking.

The girl who had been typing looked over to her drowsy golem-friend. "I can't think of what I want to do tomorrow!" she cried out as she dejectedly slumped over in her chair.

"Maybe you should give these guys a break," Lys said after another yawn. _"And give me a break from all the noisy typing,"_ she added silently. "You've got a whole week. Put yourself in their shoes; would you want to be tortured day in and day out by some wacky chick with sadistic tendencies?"

"In…their…shoes?" Mel repeated with a look of confusion. Suddenly, a metaphorical light bulb went off in her head. "That's it! Lys, you're a genius!" she exclaimed as she jumped up from her seat.

"So you'll listen to what I said?" the golem asked.

"Oh no, your advice was terrible," Mel stated matter-of-factly. "But you just gave me a brilliant idea!" she explained.

"_Brilliant idea?" _Lys thought._ "That's what she said about the fashion show. I should probably stop her."_

But just as the golem was about to argue, yet another yawn escaped her mouth. _"But I'm so tired…maybe just a little rest…just for a few minutes…"_ And with that, Lys was out like a light.

Giggling at Lys' obvious exhaustion, Mel sat back down at the desk in their room, the Gilded Pen open and ready for its master's instructions.

Mel's giggles turned into dark chuckles as she typed at a ferocious pace. _"Tomorrow's gonna be a blast."_

* * *

_THE NEXT DAY..._

* * *

Watching the sunrise was always such a magical and moving experience, and from the huge windows and high balconies of the Black Order. As the orb of gold rose, it stained the sky countless shades of red, orange, yellow, and even lavender. It was truly a sight to behold.

It was too bad that Road was too busy sleeping to ever notice.

No matter how hard her father Sheryl tried, the girl refused to wake up at a decent hour. She would rather savor her dreams for as long as possible, and that usually led to her waking up at around 10:30. She was, after all, the Noah of Dreams.

Having had completed her daily stay in the sleeping world, the little Noah rubbed her eyes and yawned. Still half asleep, she reached over to her nightstand to grab one of her favorite cherry lollipops, thinking that maybe the sugar would help her wake up.

She was surprised to find in her hand not a lollipop, but a book. And it was a fairly substantial book as well, consisting of over 300 pages.

"_That's weird. I don't remember leaving a book there,"_ she told herself as she examined the object.

As her morning daze started to wear off and Road became more aware of her surroundings, she noticed the state of the room she was in. It was decorated very plainly just like all the other rooms in the Black Order. On one side of the bed was a nightstand, and on the other was an armoire for holding clothes. There was also a desk and matching chair that sat in the corner opposite the bed. Three lamps were scattered throughout the small room; one was on the desk, one near the bed, and the last one near the door that lead out into the hallway. Overall, it was a very normal room.

Which didn't make any sense.

"_I could've sworn I just finished painting my room red, black, and purple,"_ Road pondered. _"I also remember replacing all the lamps with my floating candles, and using the desk as a shelf to display all my dolls."_

Sensing something fishy was going on, the girl decided to go and ask Tyki about it. As she reached over to pull off her covers, she gasped at what she saw.

Wide-eyed, Road whispered softly, "That's not my hand."

Terrified, she threw off the covers as fast as she could and ran to full-length mirror that stood next to the armoire. As she studied her reflection, she paled considerably, and her mouth opened and closed soundlessly, the sudden shock causing her to lose use of her vocal cords.

But her muteness was short-lived.

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHH!!! WHY AM I TYKI-PON?!?!?!"

* * *

"Yo, Jon, what do you think of that Mel girl?"

"She's crazy with a weird sense of humor. Almost like a female Lavi."

"I think she's kinda cute."

"Since when do you like psycho chicks?!"

"She's not a psycho, Dave! She's just…unique."

"Whatever, man. But don't come to me when-" The finder never got to finish his rebuttal as a tall man still wearing his nightclothes and sporting some serious bed head ran past him. Or rather ran _through_ him.

"Gotta find Komui, gotta find Komui," they heard him chant to himself in a paranoid voice as he rounded the corner that lead to the Supervisor's office.

Both finders stared at the retreating form of the man, absolutely speechless. Then Dave turned to Jon and said incredulously, "_That's_ supposed to be our mortal enemy?"

* * *

She honestly had no idea why she was going to talk to Komui. What would he know about this…this…_thing_? But since she couldn't come up with any other ideas (and she had no idea where the real Tyki was), she decided to hunt down the Black Order's supervisor.

Finally finding the door, she grabbed the handle and swung it open, forgetting that it was impolite to do so without knocking first.

She was greeted with the sight of 10 people looking at her in confusion. Confusion was followed by sweatdropping or, in Allen's case, facepalming.

It was then that the Noah realized she had forgotten to change into day clothes during her panic-induced frenzy.

"Er, Road-chan, right?" a strangely composed Komui asked the now-blushing man.

"How did you know?!" Road asked. She grabbed her throat, surprised that her voice was at least two octaves lower than usual.

"Lucky guess," Komui answered unenthusiastically. He turned to face the brunette teen that was sitting on the couch in the middle of the room. "Now that everyone's here, perhaps you'd care to elaborate on what exactly is going on here."

Leaning back and putting her hands behind her head, Mel looked up at Komui and said, "Today, I decided to try something a little different. So instead of forcing you guys to do something funny and embarrasing, I just used the Gilded Pen to have you guys swap bodies for the day."

"Can't you let us go back to our normal bodies? This is disturbing," Kanda said in an uncharacteristically polite and flustered tone.

"That's gonna be a problem," Mel said. "You see, when I was typing this into the laptop last night, I happened upon a little tool that sets a timer for the beginning and end of any change that is typed in. I set it up so the body swap would happen at 4am and last until 8pm. And for some reason once I set the timer, I couldn't change the cancel time."

"So we're stuck like this until tonight?" Kanda asked.

Mel simply nodded her head in response.

Everyone in the room sighed and some started complaining about how bad the day was going to be. Seeing an opportunity to do some recon, Mel reached over to grab a piece of paper and pen from Komui's incredibly cluttered desk. You see, even though she had been the one to switch everyone's bodies, she didn't know who was in which body, so she decided to use this opportunity to find out.

"This is terrible! Why the hell do I have to be stuck as BaKanda?!" Kanda said as he grabbed his hair by the roots.

"_That's definitely Allen,"_ Mel thought as she scribbled down her observation.

Lenalee scowled deeply and snapped at the samurai: "Oi, shut up, Moyashi. You should consider yourself lucky."

"_And that would be Kanda."_

"Kanda, you can't really call Allen 'Moyashi' if he's in your body, because then you'd be calling yourself a bean sprout," Miranda innocently pointed out.

"_With that fool-proof logic, my first guess would be that Lavi is Miranda."_

"Shut up, Baka Usagi, before I shave your head and tie you to a lamppost," Lenalee threatened.

"Kanda, stop using my beloved Lenalee's mouth to spout such garbage," Reever yelled indignantly. The only response he got was a "che", which caused Reever to start twitching and mumble something about a torture chamber. Komui and Krory came over to try to get him to calm down, but something about seeing Krory made Reever burst into tears and scream, "Oh, my poor Lenalee!!!"

"_Clearly Komui and Reever have switched places, and Lenalee ended up in Krory's body,"_ Mel wrote down. As an afterthought, she added, _"I feel really bad for Reever. Having to swap places with Sister Complex is cruel and unusual punishment."_

Seeing that the situation was quickly getting out of hand, Lavi and Road tried to calm everyone down. However, their efforts were in vain, especially since Road kept stuttering so that no one could understand her.

"_Krory must be Lavi, and Miranda is Road."_

The only person who didn't get involved in the larger discussions was Allen, who was sitting down in a chair in the far corner of the room, resting his head between his knees. Although he was pretty far away and it was hard to hear anything with all the yelling (and crying, courtesy of Reever/Komui), Mel managed to make out the words "need a cigarette" coming from the white haired teen.

"_Definitely Tyki,"_ she concluded with an eye roll.

Finishing off her last sentence, Mel put down her pen and examined her handiwork. After 5 minutes of trying to decipher what she had just written, she groaned loudly, crumpled up her notes, and threw it in the trash bin.

"Maybe this wasn't such a good idea," she said under her breath as she watched the chaos in front of her continue unrestricted.

* * *

If anyone could follow that "who's who" part, you have my upmost respect and admiration. Because I'm not even sure _I_ know who's who. O_o;

Anyway, due to length and flow issues, I'll be splitting this part of the story into two chapters like I did for the diary incident. The rest should be up soon, so please be patient.

Keep in mind if no one reviews this fic, I might not finish it, and then you'd never know how the gang survives swapping bodies, what Kanda had hidden in his treasure chest, and all the other great ideas I have for this little story. So review!


	7. Day 3: Cigarettes?

Sorry about the later-than-usual update. I started watching the subbed episodes of -Man (before, I only read the manga), and I can't focus on anything else until I have seen all 103 episodes (it's a bad habit of mine to finish what I've started as soon as possible ^^; ). I'm currently up to the part where Allen shows up in Edo with his brand new Crowned Clown. I must say, the anime is really good. Except it has too many fillers in the beginning. And now I keep having the urge to say "arigatou" instead of "thank you". =_=

As usual, I would like to thank Shoten Shinzui, LOVElessLoser968, Japanimaniac, Karoomy-chan, Zenigami, Jigoku No Hana, Zack1996, Candyone11, and Dark-n-Light341 for all the encouragement. Reading your comments or even just knowing that you've fav'd me brightens my day. ^-^

Disclaimer: Not even in my wildest dreams do I own -Man. And my dreams are pretty weird; once I dreamt that I was being chased by a homicidal pink bunny. ^^;;

Now, I present…*drumroll*…Chapter 6!

* * *

"_Maybe this wasn't such a good idea," she said under her breath as she watched the chaos in front of her continue unrestricted._

* * *

30 MINUTES LATER

* * *

"Here's some more paperwork for the Supervisor, Reever-san," Johnny mumbled from behind the giant stack he was carrying.

"Thanks, Johnny," Reever said as he took the pile from the boy. "You can go now."

But Johnny didn't move to leave; he just stared between Komui and Reever as if they had both grown 3 heads.

"Er, Reever-san, why are _you_ signing papers instead of Komui-san?"

"Don't ask," the men deadpanned simultaneously.

"But-"

"Oi, Johnny-kun, why don't you go see if Tapp-kun needs some help, okay?" Reever suggested as he pushed the stuttering boy out of the office and locked the door behind him.

Mentally exhausted, the man slid down to the floor and removed his beret. "This is going to be a long day," he sighed. _"If only Komui would stop whining."_

"Reeeeeeveeeeerrr, why do I have to do this noooowwwww?"

"_Speak of the devil."_

"Because, body swap or not, you still have to do your job!" the irritated Chinese man told his blonde boss.

"But I have to go and make sure Kanda doesn't do anything disgraceful to my beloved Lenalee's body!" Komui shouted, slamming his hands down on his desk so hard it threatened to topple all of his paper skyscrapers.

"Oh, come on!" Reever shouted in annoyance. "If it was Lavi, I could understand, but we're talking about Kanda here. He won't do anything."

"But why am I here?!" Mel piped up from beside Komui.

"Because this is the only way punishment I could think of that would make you seriously think about what you've done," Reever replied. "Not only have you put us all in a very uncomfortable situation, but you even forced Lenalee, Road, Kanda, and Lavi to switch genders. What on earth made you think that making Lavi a girl was a good idea?!" he shouted accusingly.

"Oh, don't worry so much Reever-san," the girl dismissed with a wave of her hand. "This fic is only rated K+. I would never go so low as having Lavi learn about the intricacies of female anatomy like that."

"What?" Komui and Reever asked at the same time.

"Oh, nothing, nothing," Mel quickly answered, laughing nervously.

Komui scratched his head in confusion at the girl's reaction, but Reever just shook his head and said, "Regardless, you still went too far this time, so now you have to stay here and help the supervisor sign these papers."

"What?! No!" Mel screamed in distress. "This is cruel and unusual punishment! I want to see what's happening outside!!!" Tears welled up in her eyes as she tried to give Reever her best puppy-dog face.

"Tough luck." Apparently, Reever had become immune to the puppy-dog face after working with Komui for so long. "If you don't stay here and help Komui, I'll tell Jerry to not give you anything to eat other than Brussels sprouts," he threatened.

"NOT BURSSELS SPROUTS! I HATE THOSE!!!" shouted Mel as she leaned back in her chair and pulled her hair.

"Well then, you better get to work," Reever said calmly as he walked out of the office towards the Science Department.

When he had closed the door behind him, Komui and Mel exchanged dejected looks before they got to work on filling out the paperwork in front of them. Since she couldn't forge signatures for her life, Mel was using a special stamp designed to mimic Komui's unique writing style.

"I wonder what the gang is doing right now…" the teen mumbled to herself as she dipped her stamp in the ink pan.

* * *

Road Camelot groaned in despair as she looked at the clothes-littered floor in front of her. After searching through Tyki's entire closet, she couldn't find a single outfit she liked. And she couldn't just go outside in his nightclothes again; that would be _so_ tacky.

She ended up putting on a plain white shirt, a pair of black pants, and a jacket off the floor that she decided wasn't _too_ ugly. She had to take Tyki shopping some time and buy him some _real_ clothes. _"I mean, who wears tuxedos all the time? Has he evenr heard of T-shirts or jeans?"_

"Road?" The Noah jumped a full foot in the air when Tyki interrupted her mental rant. Somehow, he had managed to walk up the hallway, enter the room, and close the door behind him without her noticing. It was unsettling how sneaky he could be, especially since he was in someone else's body.

"Could you do me a favor and give me one of my cigarettes?" he asked his "niece" from his spot on the far wall. "I keep them in my jacket pocket," he added.

Rather than reach in the pocket and hand him a cigarette, though, Road shouted, "I'm not giving you a cigarette! You'll poison the lungs of my beloved Allen!"

"What?! I'm going crazy here!" Tyki yelled back. His low nicotine levels were causing him to be extremely irritable at the moment, and he didn't know how much longer he could last without a smoke.

"Well, now's the perfect chance for you to quit smoking. It's such a nasty habit after all," Road teased.

"Don't make me take them from you, Road," Tyki threatened as he started walking towards her.

Road scoffed at his attempt to be scary. "Hello, I can just phase _through_ you," the Noah remarked in a mocking tone.

"Good thinking, Road," Tyki complimented. "Except you forgot that I'm in Walker's body, and he just so happens to have an arm made out of innocence," he added with a smirk.

An awkward silence emerged as the meaning of Tyki's words sunk in. Then, without warning, Road shouted, "See ya!" and ran through the door that led into the hallway.

"ARGH, WAIT!" Tyki shouted as he ran after his "niece". Unfortunately for him, his brain was running on empty, so he forgot that he was in Allen's body and therefore couldn't phase through walls.

So he ran full-speed into the solid oak door.

"I hate my life," the Noah muttered darkly as he rubbed his sore nose and reached for the doorknob.

* * *

"IYAAAAAAAA!"

Lavi's scream sounded incredibly girly as he tripped and landed on the floor face-first.

"Lavi, are you okay?" a concerned Lenalee asked. "That's the 8th time you've fallen since we started walking towards the cafeteria."

"I can't help it! It's this body! Miranda's legs must be different lengths or something!" Lavi complained as he peeled himself off the stone floor.

"Oh, I'm so sorry, Lavi-kun!" Miranda gushed as she broke out into tears. "It's all my fault! I can't do anything right!" She fell to the floor on her knees, crying hysterically about how useless she was.

"Now look what you've done. Apologize!" Lenalee shouted at Lavi while hitting him in the head.

"Okay, okay!" he yelled as he rubbed the new bump on his head. "Miranda, I'm sorry. It's not your fault." Lavi soothed.

"R-r-really?" she asked through her tears.

"Of course!" the junior bookman replied with a smile. "Now, let's go get some lunch!"

Offering her his hand, Lavi helped Miranda up from the floor. The two then moved to join Lenalee, Allen, Kanda, and Krory at the entrance to the cafeteria.

Everyone got in line to get their food, and when it was finally Allen's turn, Jerry sang out, "Hello, Kanda-san. The usual, I assume?"

Allen's eye twitched at being mistaken for Kanda, but it was to be expected; neither Komui nor Reever had bothered to tell the rest of the Order about what Mel had done last night. Since Allen was too hungry to bother explaining what had happened to Jerry, he just said, "Actually, I want lasagna, chicken lo mein, 20 fried dumplings, 5 slices of pizza, tiramisu, cheesecake, spaghetti and meatballs, pepper steak, mashed potatoes, fettuccini alfredo, 3 hamburgers…"

Jerry's jaw dropped as he listened to the increasingly long list of food. After 30 seconds of speechlessness, he finally managed to utter, "A-Allen-kun? What are you doing in Kanda-san's body?"

"Long story," Allen replied with a pained look.

"Well, as long as you still have your appetite, I don't really care what you look like," Jerry said. And so he went off to cook the ridiculously large amount of food the teen had requested just to return 15 minutes later holding the whole order. "Here you go, sweetie!" he exclaimed, handing Allen his food.

"Thanks!" Carefully balancing his leaning tower, Allen made his way over to the table where the rest of his friends were already eating. Setting down the tray, he picked up his fork and knife and prepared to dig in.

But before he could get started, a concerned Krory asked, "Uh, Allen, do you really think you can eat all that?"

"Yeah, you're in Kanda's body after all, and he doesn't have your black hole of a stomach," Lavi added.

"I'll be fine," Allen assured his friends. "Now let's eat!"

* * *

10 MINUTES LATER

* * *

"Ugh, I don't feel so good," the teen mumbled as he held his rumbling stomach.

"That's weird. You've barely made a dent in your food," Lenalee observed. For some reason, Allen had only managed to eat half of his first dish in the time it usually took him to eat 5.

"I think Kanda's body is reacting badly to the non-Japanese food," Lavi suggested as he studied his now-ill friend.

"So you mean he actually had a reason for eating nothing but soba?" Allen asked. "Why didn't you warn me, Kanda?"

Kanda, who had been quietly eating his soba, replied, "Che, you never asked, Moyashi."

"It's All-" the boy started but stopped as a groan escaped his lips. "Ugh, I think I'm gonna puke." Sure enough, Allen's face took on a distinctive green tinge, and he clamped his hands over his mouth.

"Not in my body, you're not," Kanda threatened from across the table.

Just when it seemed like Allen was going to hurl in the middle of lunch, one of the entrances to the cafeteria flew open as a flash of white streaked by the exorcists' table.

"I finally got it!" someone with a British accent screamed in delight as the flash ran through another cafeteria entrance.

This was quickly followed by a "Don't you dare light that cigarette, Tyki!" and a black steak running in the same direction.

"Was that Road-chan and Tyki-san?" Miranda asked, staring at the entrance they had just raced through.

"I think so," said Lavi.

"What do you think they were doing, Allen-kun?" Lenalee asked her friend. When he didn't respond, she looked over to find that Allen was staring at the cafeteria entrance with a completely blank expression. "Allen? Allen?!" She grabbed him by the shoulders and shook him to try to get his attention. "Allen, snap out of it!"

But he didn't hear her nor did he notice being shaken. He was too busy thinking about what he had just seen. "_Tyki managed to get something from Road. Who is in his body. The only thing he could want from her is something he felt he needed that he always kept on his person. Tyki is a smoker. So he's addicted to cigarettes. Like Master. So he probably took a cigarette. Cigarettes make everything around them smell like smoke. And Tyki was about to smoke. In my body. So I would smell like smoke for the next week. Just like Master…"_

Lenalee practically fell out of her seat as Allen suddenly stood up and reached for Mugen (he's in Kanda's body, remember?). Before she could ask what was wrong, an alarmingly powerful killing aura emerged from the boy. "Oh Tyki," Allen said in a dark sing-songy voice that sounded 10 times scarier coming from Kanda, "if you light that cigarette…"

Suddenly, the aura's concentration increased 10 fold. "I WILL CHOP YOU UP INTO LITTLE, BITE-SIZED PIECES AND FEED THEM TO PIRAHNAS!!!" he screamed as he unsheathed Mugen and ran off after the Noah, stomach upset apparently forgotten.

Everyone stared on in shock as the usually docile Allen Walker ran off to murder Tyki. Except for Kanda, who just took a sip of his green tea and smirked.

"Looks like the Moyashi has a backbone after all."

* * *

LATER THAT DAY…

* * *

"Just one more minute until 8," Lenalee announced as she relaxed on her brother's couch, clock close at hand. For the past half an hour, the whole gang except for two Noahs and an exorcist had been hanging out in Komui's office because Reever figured it would be best if everyone was close by for the second body swap.

"Thank god, I thought today would never end," Lavi sighed as he held an ice pack to his head. The poor exorcist had fallen 43 times in the course of the day; it was a miracle he didn't have a concussion by now.

"Tell me about it," Mel agreed from beside the junior bookman. "I was locked in Komui's office all day stamping papers. Do you know how boring that is?!" she shouted dramatically.

"Finally, someone understands me!" Komui exclaimed, crying tears of joy.

"Aw, shut up, you two," commanded Reever from behind the newspaper he was reading.

"No! Today was really horrible!" Mel complained. "I didn't even get to see how funny Kanda would look with Allen's personality!"

"Hey, where are Tyki, Road, and Allen anyway?" Miranda inquired.

"I haven't seen them since they ran out of the cafeteria," Lavi answered. "Maybe they-"

"Argh, stay the hell away from me, Road!" someone screamed from outside the office. Judging from the voice, the scream had come from a certain Japanese exorcist. Or rather the person who was in said exorcist's body.

"But Allen, I just want to kiss you," Road whined. It didn't sound as cute as it was intended to on account of the person whining was technically a full-grown man.

"How many times do I have to say it? I. Don't. Like. You." The teen was careful to emphasize the "don't" in the last sentence.

Everyone stared at the door as several loud thuds and bangs were heard from beyond it. Suddenly, Tyki's voice sang out, "Hah, I got you now!"

"No!" The door leading into the office suddenly fell from its hinges into the room to reveal Road on top of a stunned Allen, lips locked in a pretty intense kiss.

As soon as the two landed, the clock struck eight, and the office was immersed in a bright, white light.

After 5 seconds, the light receded to reveal everybody standing/sitting right where they were before, except they were now in their correct bodies.

But no one really cared about that at the moment; they were too focused on the sight of Tyki lying on top of Kanda. Kissing.

They probably stayed like that for a good 30 seconds before Kanda's brain started working again and he kicked Tyki off of him, sending him through the ceiling (which Tyki forgot to phase through). Then he got up and walked out of the office, not bothering to turn around to face his comrades. Unfortunately, he didn't leave fast enough, and everyone caught a glimpse of the samurai's flushed cheeks.

After a long, stunned silence, Mel leaned over and whispered excitedly into Lavi's ear, "I change my mind; today was like a dream come true."

* * *

And so ends the Body Swap Incident. I hope you all enjoyed that small dose of KandaxTyki. I usually don't write any yaoi, so if you don't like that sort of thing, don't worry; this is as hardcore as it's gonna get.  
And if you do like that sort of thing…this is as hardcore as it's gonna get. Sorry.

Anyway, do you guys remember that plot bunny I wrote about in Chapter 4? I've decided to keep him around for the time being. He's being quite persistent, so this fic might take longer to update than before.  
And yes, this plot bunny is DGM related. And it's actiony! ^0^ But don't expect to read anything about it soon; I'm not planning to post it until Christmas time.

That's the end of this note. Now it's time for all my beloved readers to review! Please? ^-^

Edit: Just realized two boys kissing means that this fic is better off in the T category. Oops. ^^;;;;;


	8. Day 4: Hell's Kitchen

Hey, everybody! I have awesome news. The first is that I finished watching the -Man anime! *throws confetti*  
It had a lot of fillers in the beginning that I could've done without, but it was still very well done. If you've never watched it, I recommend doing so, especially the Ark arc. ^-^

My second piece of good news is that I have now been a member of this lovely website for a full month. And do you know what that means?  
I can finally be a Beta!!! ^0^  
If there's anyone out there that can use a grammar freak who has absolutely nothing else to do other than edit stories, look me up on the Beta page. I promise I'll do my best! =D  
(I will also Beta stories written for Pandora Hearts, Kingdom Hearts and Chrno Crusade, so tell all your Internet buddies, too.)

As always, big thanks and free virtual cookies to Candyone11, Iruchi-chan, Karoomy-chan, KitsuneHinote, Shoten Shinzui, cottoncandycosmo, Zenigami, liledormouse, and Zack1996 for your reviews/favs/alerts.

Disclaimer: Unless the DGM characters suddenly turn into stick-figures, assume I don't own it.

_**Special Note:**__ Tembleque is a coconut pudding made in Puerto Rico (and possibly other countries). Empanadas are kind of like fried dumplings except the outside shell is different, and it's stuffed with beef and cheese. Fried calamari is fancy talk for fried squid. All three are incredibly yummy and highly recommended. ^-^_

Now, prepare yourselves. Chapter 7 is upon us. *plays recording of dramatic music*

* * *

"Hey guys, guess what?"

No one bothered to answer the girl's question; they just stared at her with expressions ranging from boredom to irritation to apprehension to pent-up rage (the last of which was provided by a certain Mugen-wielding soba-freak).

"Come on, guess!" Mel begged. Yet again, she was met with absolute silence. Not even the usually-friendly scientists saw fit to grace her with an answer.

"You guys are no fun," the teen complained with a pout.

"Stop beating around the damn bush and give us your announcement already!" a finder yelled from across the room.

"Yeah, you're the one that called us all here. I've got stuff to do, so hurry up!" another added.

"Fine, fine. Don't get your trousers in a knot," Mel snapped at the two. Regaining her characteristic amity, she continued, "I've decided to do something totally different. We're going to have…" Mel took a deep breath for dramatic effect. "…a cooking contest!!!"

She was a little disappointed that her announcement only solicited moans and groans from her audience, but at least it was better than the silence she was getting before.

Refusing to give up, she started explaining the contest rules: "You guys will be competing with each other to make the best meal, boys-versus-girls style, and I'll be the judge."

"And why would we ever want to participate in such a waste of time?" Tyki asked snidely, taking a drag of his cigarette.

"I'm glad you asked, Tyki-pon. Because whichever side wins gets prank immunity for a whole day!" the teen exclaimed, throwing her hands up dramatically.

The gasps of surprise and subsequent gossiping among the Order residents brought a giant, toothy smile to girl's face. _"Finally, I got a reaction!_" she thought. _"What a relief! For a minute there, I thought I was losing my touch."_

She cupped her hands over her mouth and yelled, "Oi, stop chatting so I can explain the rules!" Amazingly, the noise stopped almost immediately, taking the brunette by surprise. Pulling the contest rules out of her pocket and unfolding them, she read in her best orator's voice, "Each team may only consist of 20 members and must cook one appetizer, one entrée, and one dessert within the 3 hour time limit. I will be judging each course separately based on taste and presentation. First side to win two rounds gets the prize. And boys…" She looked up from her list to make eye contact with her intended audience. "You will be automatically disqualified if you ask Jerry for any help or advice. Now take your time to work out the team rosters while I prepare the work stations." With that, Mel walked out of the cafeteria to get her enchanted laptop.

As soon as she left, the cafeteria was immediately split in half with the men and women sitting at opposite sides.

"Alright, let's get down to business," Lavi said as he climbed up onto nearby table to get his teammates' attention. "We have to win this thing. And I mean _have_ to. There's not a lot of info about fangirls in the history books, but I do know that many are obsessed with yaoi." Most of the men groaned and squirmed in discomfort at the mention of the forbidden word. "We cannot afford to let the girls win. For that reason, I suggest that Allen and I sneak into the girls' team and sabotage them."

"WHAT? WHY?!" the white-haired exorcist screamed, jumping onto the table to stand next to Lavi.

"Because I'm a good actor, and you already look a bit like a girl," the junior bookman answered with a straight face.

"That's not what I meant, and I do not look like a girl!" Allen cried out indignantly

"Aw, is the poor little Moyashi going to cry?"

After glaring daggers at Kanda for 5 seconds, the teen regained his composure and explained, "What I meant was why does anyone have to sabotage the girls in the first place?"

"Because without Jerry, our chances of winning are one in one hundred trillion. Plus, girls are taught how to cook from childhood. It's only fair if we make their jobs a little harder," argued Lavi.

"I'm still not doing it," Allen asserted.

"That's what you think, Moyashi-chan," the red-head said mischievously. "Men, seize him!"

Suddenly, 3 pairs of hands grabbed Allen's ankles and yanked him off the table. Kicking and flailing widely, the boy screamed, "Let me go! This is harassment!"

"No, this is strategy," his friend corrected. "Let's go!" he exclaimed as he started skipping towards the bathroom, the men dragging Allen close behind.

"Ah, somebody save me!" Allen screamed. Unfortunately for him, the cafeteria was huge, so the girls were out of earshot, and all the guys were already laughing and waving goodbye. But that didn't stop him from yelling as he was dragged to his reputational doom.

* * *

10 minutes later…

* * *

"I can't believe I'm actually going along with this," the silver-haired exorcist mumbled as he attempted to straighten his new blonde wig.

"Come on, Moyashi-chan, this is going to be great!"

"No it's not, Lavi. It's going to be horrible! How can girls stand to wear these things anyway?" the teen questioned as he pointed to the female finder's uniform he was wearing. Like most women's clothing, it included a long skirt that stopped at the ankles and a corset, which was never renowned as the most comfortable of undergarments.

Lavi shrugged his shoulders. "Beats me, but the breeze is kind of nice."

Chuckling at the blush that came over Allen's cheeks, the cross-dressing spy snuck around the corner to peek down the hall. After a brief survey, he turned back and said, "There are the girls up ahead. Just remember the plan: my name is Luna, yours is Irene, and we're the new finders that just arrived from the North American branch. Got it?"

"Yeah, yeah, I know," replied a still-flustered Allen. "Let's just get this over with."

He followed the skipping Lavi around the corner and headed towards the crowd of girls standing in front of the cafeteria entrance waiting for Mel. As it turned out, the girls were short two team members for the contest, so no one questioned the two as they joined the ranks, and thanks to Lavi's multiple aliases and Allen's infamous poker face, no one figured out that they were in fact male.

As the newly-christened Luna and Irene mingled with their "partners", Mel showed up and told everyone to follow her.

"Here's your official workstation, girls!" she exclaimed as she gestured to a simple oak door in the middle of the hallway.

"Um, Mel-chan, that's not a kitchen; that's a closet," Lenalee (who of course was on the girls' team) pointed out.

"Not anymore, it's not. Behold!" Mel grabbed hold of the knob and with a dramatic swing opened the door for everyone to see.

Inside was a modern, galley style kitchen complete with 4 convection ovens, an industrial-sized refrigerator/freezer, 2 microwaves, 3 gas-powered stove tops, 5 deep sinks, dozens of copper pots and pans, and enough granite countertops to pave a whole New York City block. And the whole thing was literally sparkling and glowing, untouched by even the smallest speck of dust or dirt.

All the girls' (and Allen's and Lavi's) mouths fell open as they took in the sight, and their eyes shined as bright as the stainless steel appliances did. After 5 minutes of silent admiration, Road finally asked the question on everyone's minds: "How did you do all this?!"

"This was nothing for the almighty Melody!" the teen responded, striking a heroic pose that made half the girls sweatdrop.

"So you used the Gilded Pen to make this room?" one of the female finders questioned.

"Yeah, pretty much." Now it was the other half's turn to sweatdrop.

"Anyway, all the supplies you'll need are in the cupboards and pantry," Mel told the girls in a more serious voice. "You're free to leave the room for potty breaks and the like, but no one is allowed in the other team's kitchen. Doing so will disqualify you from the competition." After explaining the last of the rules, the girl's expressions changed once more to the more familiar happy-go-lucky one. "Good luck to you all, and happy cooking!"

And off the fangirl skipped to go set up the boys' kitchen.

* * *

"Good luck to you all, and happy cooking!" said Mel as she closed the door, leaving 20 men alone in a high end kitchen with no clear leader.

Let the chaos ensue.

Within a minute, the few scientists on the team had started a heated debate on the differences between normal and extra virgin olive oil, the finders were gossiping about how cute Allen looked in a dress, Tyki was smoking twice as fast as usual to make up for his nicotine-free day yesterday, and Krory and Chaoji were trying to drag Cross away from the kitchen's wine cooler. All of this happened while a dark storm cloud seemed to be forming above an increasingly-pissed off samurai's head.

After another minute passed, the cloud reached critical mass, and in a voice that rivaled the thunder god's, Kanda yelled, "WILL YOU ALL JUST SHUT UP!!!"

Everyone in the room, even the ever-composed Cross, immediately fell silent and stared at the still-fuming exorcist. After taking several calming breaths and quickly counting backwards from 100, Kanda walked over to the middle of the kitchen and spoke. "Let me make this perfectly clear for you half-wits: there is no way in hell I'm losing to those girls and letting that freak show of a fangirl have her way tomorrow, so if you don't win, I will skin you all! Now, does anyone here know how to cook?" he demanded as he surveyed his "team".

"I-I u-used to cook for myself and my grandfather when I was younger," Krory said as he timidly raised his hand.

"I can cook!" Komui screamed from his spot behind Krory. "I always used to make Lenalee breakfast every morning."

"And did she ever eat it?" Reever asked skeptically.

"…No, she would always shake her head, throw it out, and make a meal fit for the King of England," the man recollected with a contented sigh at how delicious her cooking was.

"Saw that one coming," Reever deadpanned.

After face palming at the stupidity that was Komui, Kanda recollected himself and said, "Ok, people that can cook, write your best dishes up on the board. We'll divide up tasks from there."

About 7 men came forward to write their names and dishes on the whiteboard that had been included in the kitchen in case the teams needed a way to delegate tasks quickly and efficiently.

As the culinary-literate discussed their plan of action in front of the board, the rest of the men talked amongst themselves. "Who knew Kanda-san was such a good leader?" one of the finders asked in admiration.

The man next to him replied, "The same people that knew that Kanda kept a diary and thinks Allen's cute."

"In other words, no one?"

"Yep."

* * *

"Lavi?"

"It's not Lavi, it's Luna."

Allen rolled his eyes at Lavi's correction. In a voice dripping with sarcasm, he asked, "Luna?"

"Yes, Irene?" Lavi answered politely.

"Why are we flushing all the pasta down the toilet?"

"Because I heard the girls talking about making fettuccini alfredo for their entrée," Lavi replied as he poured more of the raw noodles into the toilet bowl. "And everyone knows you can't make pasta with cheese sauce without the pasta."

Allen sighed as he took the now-empty box from Lavi and gave him a new one. Originally, the plan had seemed simple; steal all the pasta and flush it down the toilet so that no one would discover that it had been taken in the first place. But things got much more complicated when they realized that there were 5 huge boxes filled with the stuff; apparently, Mel hadn't been exaggerating when she said the kitchen was fully stocked. After many frequent potty breaks between the two of them, they had managed to swipe all the boxes in 10 minutes without being caught.

After Lavi had finished emptying the last box, the two retreated back to the kitchen to watch their plan "come to fruition" as the junior bookman so eloquently put it.

But just as they got back, one of the female finders came into the room with a huge smile.

"Hey, everyone, I managed to get some quality intel from Mel!" At the sound of the judge's name, all the women stopped what they were doing and turned to face the ecstatic finder. "I couldn't get her to talk about appetizers, but I found out that her favorite entrée is empanadas, and her favorite dessert is tembleque."

All of the girls gathered around her and started saying things like "That's great!", "Way to go, Penelope!", and "There's no way we can lose now!" Somewhere in the middle of the crowd came a "Somebody, go and get the dough for the empanadas. And get some coconut in here," and everyone went back to their workstations to start preparing the new dishes.

In a somewhat-isolated corner of the room, Lavi swore under his breath while Allen sulked.

* * *

"Wow, who knew cooking was such hard work?" one of the scientists questioned as he was grinded up some of the beef that was going to be used in the team's entrée.

"And it's so hot in here too," another added, wiping the sweat from his brow with the back of his hand.

"Stop complaining and face it like a man," a particular red-head ridiculed from his smoking corner.

"You shouldn't be talking, General," the second man noted. "You're not even helping."

"What are you talking about? I'm lending my years of experience to you novices. Be grateful," General Cross replied offhandedly before taking another long drag from his cigarette.

Both men and everyone else in the immediate vicinity sweatdropped at the general's antics. _"So that's why Allen-san always develops a murderous aura when the word 'Cross' is mentioned."_

* * *

"Lavi-"

"Ahem."

"Sorry. _Luna_, this is never going to work."

"Nonsense, Irene. This is a classic. It's practically guaranteed to ruin the girls' dessert."

When the coast was finally clear, Lavi casually made his way over to the counter where all the seasonings and condiments were kept. With Allen acting as lookout, the exorcist discreetly swapped the salt and sugar labels on the jars. _"Thank goodness Mel was careless enough to put the salt and sugar in identical containers,"_ the junior bookman thought as he admired his work.

He didn't get much time to dwell on the genius of his plan, however, as Allen grabbed him by the collar and pulled him behind the refrigerator.

"What was that for?!" Lavi whined as he rubbed his now-sore neck.

Allen clamped his hand over his friend's mouth and gestured for him to stay quiet. After removing his hand, the two peeked over the edge of the refrigerator to see Miranda walking over to the counter with a pan in one hand and a book in the other.

"Okay, let's see…" She nervously set down the pan, opened the book to a marked page, and started reading the directions aloud: "'Combine the coconut milk with 2 ¼ cups of sugar in a saucepan and bring to a full boil.' Um…"

Putting down the book, the German exorcist looked at the containers in front of her. Picking up the measuring cup, she opened the lid to the sugar container and filled it to the top. But before she put it in, she tripped (while standing still, mind you) and sent the substance flying across the floor. It took 3 finders plus Lenalee 5 minutes to calm Miranda down enough to the point where she stopped crying and sobbing about how worthless she was as a human being. During those few minutes, Allen and Lavi could only look on in pity at the poor woman.

After finally cleaning up the mess, the girls left Miranda alone to finish their own jobs. Being careful not to trip again, the woman dropped 2 scoopfuls of the white crystals into the saucepan, and took it back to the stove, watching where she stepped.

At this point, Allen and Lavi should have been celebrating the success of their sabotage attempt. And they would have.

If Miranda hadn't dumped in two cups of crystals from the container with the "salt" label.

"I can't believe it! She took the sugar from the wrong container!!!" Allen whispered disbelievingly as he observed the German woman mixing the concoction over high heat (which in retrospect was not a good idea to let her do).

Lavi just sweatdropped and made a mental note to _never_ let Miranda cook _anything_ for him.

* * *

Happy whistling could be heard over the hustle-and-bustle of the kitchen as two men cooked the noodles and sauce needed for the lasagna that was going to serve as the entrée in their meal. The one that was whistling put down the wooden spoon he was using to stir the sauce and wiped his hands on his apron. Like all the other aprons, it was decorated with pink frills and lace, but it didn't really bother Krory. Looking at the man beside him, who was making sure the lasagna noodles didn't stick together, he figured it didn't really both Tyki either.

Krory kept whistling his cheerful little tune until he heard a sound behind him. Thinking somebody wanted to ask him something, he turned around, but he was only met with the sight of a couple of finders taking a break next to an oven. Shrugging, he returned his attention to his job, unaware of the barely audible snickering coming from the men.

"What a sight. The almighty exorcists and Noahs reduced to wearing frilly aprons, making food for a little girl," one of the finders quietly mocked, jerking a finger at the two chefs. "Man, I wish I had a camera."

His fun was cut short when a whisk came flying half an inch from his face and imbedded itself in the wall. Struck dumb, he could only stare wordlessly at the utensil that had almost scrambled his brain, the men next to him just as speechless. Slowly, they all turned to face the thrower of the whisk, who was smirking at the group.

"The next one won't miss, human, so I suggest you find something else to do before I find another whisk to throw," Tyki said nonchalantly, but the look in his eye said the threat was serious. The Noah chuckled at how quickly the men ran away, some of them climbing over their "friends" to get out of the way as fast as possible.

Krory, who had stopped whistling when the whisk went flying, laughed nervously as sweat ran down his neck. _"And here I thought this would be _safer_ than going on a mission_."

* * *

"Lavi, what are we going to do? We're almost out of time, and everyone's already sending their dishes to the judging table." Allen sighed as he slid down to the floor, pulling off his incredibly itchy wig. Now that they were outside of the girls' kitchen, he saw no need to keep up their disguises.

"Don't worry, Irene-chan, I still have one last trick up my sleeve."

The boy twitched at the usage of his wretched pseudonym. Trying to mask the irritation in his voice, he said, "Lavi, there isn't anyone around, so you can stop calling me 'Irene' now."

The red-head just smiled. "Sure, Irene-chan, whatever."

Allen had to utilize all of his self-control to avoid slamming his head into the wall.

* * *

"And now, it's time for the final judging!" Jerry announced into his microphone so he could be heard over the murmur of the cafeteria. "Teams, please take your seats." He pointed to several rows of seats that sat facing the front of the cafeteria where the tables usually were. Moving as quickly as an entire demon-fighting organization could, everyone found a seat and turned their full attention to the front of the room.

Jerry, who was apparently the host for the judging portion of the contest, exclaimed, "Now put your hands together for today's star, Mel-chan!"

The girl burst into the room to spirited applause. She knew that the only reason anyone was clapping was because they had a chance of getting away from her for a day, but she enjoyed the attention nevertheless. Skipping up to meet Jerry, she shook his hand before sitting down at the table that had been moved to the very front of the cafeteria to act as the judge's table.

"First up are the appetizers," Jerry began. "From the girls' team, we have a classic Caesar salad with handmade croutons and dressing. And from the boys' team, fried calamari served with marinara sauce."

"Fried calamari? How did you make that, Yu-chan?" Lavi asked quietly from his seat behind the samurai.

"Just because I only eat soba doesn't mean I can't make anything else," the teen replied with a smirk. "And don't use my first name, baka usagi, or I'll weld your mouth shut." The following glare and scowl told Lavi that he was would probably be safer watching Mel than inquiring further about Kanda's cooking skills.

Picking up her fork, Mel brought a couple of leaves of lettuce up to her mouth and chewed. "The salad's okay, but I've never been a fan of Caesar dressing," she stated matter-of-factly.

Moving the bowl out of the way, the girl brought the fried squid closer. Forsaking her fork, she picked up a piece of calamari, dipped it in the sauce, and ate it. "Mmmmm, the calamari is cooked so well! Usually, people overcook it, and it tastes like rubber, but this is superb." As if to make her point, she devoured the rest in half a minute. Licking her fingers, she shouted, "Round 1 goes to the boys' team!"

All the males in the room erupted in cheers, and several made a move to give Kanda a pat on the back, but the touch-me-and-you-die glare convinced them otherwise.

Jerry, in his characteristically cheerful voice, said, "Next up, entrees!"

As he brought the plates out to Mel, her eyes literally sparkled with delight. "Lasagna and empanadas? What luck!" Eagerly, she took a huge bite out of both dishes and gasped. "I don't which is better! They both taste great!" Her smile was soon replaced with a critical countenance. "However, the presentation of the lasagna is deplorable. All the layers fell apart on the plate, and the cut is incredibly sloppy." All the men turned to glare at Komui, aka the-man-who-insisted-that-his-newest-Komurin-was-a-pro-at-removing-delicate-foods-from-molds-and-pans.

"Meanwhile, the empanadas were made meticulously, and there's not a burn in sight. Round 2 belongs to the girls' team!" she shouted. As expected, all the girls cheered and shook each other's hands on a job well done.

"And so we have a tie!" Jerry happily announced. Clearly he was enjoying his position as a host. "Who will win: the boys or the girls? Bring out the desserts!" The final two plates were rolled in to reveal a slice of Oreo cheesecake and what looked like some kind of pudding.

"Finally, my favorite part!" Mel shouted, clapping her hands together. When she saw the pudding, she clapped a hand over her mouth in shock. "Is that tembleque?! You guys are mind readers! How did you know that's my favorite dessert?" she asked.

Murmurs of confusion rumbled through the audience as they looked at the plates on the table.

"Didn't Krory-san make the Oreo cheesecake? Why is it on the girls' side?" One of the male finders asked. Everyone, both boys and girls, wracked their brains to figure out how the dishes had gotten switched.

Until Allen looked over at Lavi, who winked and smiled knowingly. "You didn't…"

"Hey, it's not my fault someone mixed up the desserts on the submission table," Lavi replied innocently, fighting the urge to chuckle.

"That's low, even for you," Allen muttered. Lavi just smiled, happy that at least _one_ of his plans went off without a hitch.

Oblivious to the cheating that had taken place, Mel sunk her fork into the cake and ate a piece, taking a few moments to savor the taste. "The Oreo cheesecake is fantastic! Whoever made this _has_ to give me the recipe!" she said enthusiastically.

Somewhere in the audience, Krory was turning all shades of red at the indirect compliment of his baking skills.

Dramatically raising her fork, the teen judge declared, "And now for the grand finale!" With a swipe of her fork, she moved a huge chunk of the pudding into her mouth.

For 20 seconds, no one made a sound, waiting for the final verdict on who had won and who would be tortured tomorrow. And then…

"IIIIIYYYYYAAAAAAAAAAAAA! MY TASTEBUDS! WHY, DEAR LORD, WHY?!"

The girl spit the pudding back onto the plate, frantically wiping her tongue with a napkin in an attempt to rid it of the dessert's flavor.

"What's wrong, Mel-chan?" Jerry asked worriedly.

"What's wrong is this pudding!!! Who makes tembleque with _shredded coconut_?!?!"

"But isn't tembleque just another name for coconut pudding?" Lavi asked, confusion clearly written all over his face.

"Baka! You don't use shredded coconut for tembleque; you use coconut _milk_! Using shredded coconut is like substituting raisins for grapes!" she shouted in an uncharacteristically sharp voice. "Water, I need water!!!" And the girl ran through the double doors into the Order kitchen, Jerry close behind.

After a moment of shock, Lavi slapped his forehead and ran his fingers through his flame-red hair. "How did this happen?" he asked exasperatedly. "That was supposed to be the girls' crowning achievement. Why would they…"

Suddenly, his eyes went wide, as if he had just realized some great truth. Snapping his head around to face Lenalee, he pointed an accusing finger and yelled, "You set us up, didn't you?!"

"Of course we did," the Chinese girl replied, hands on her hips. "We knew Lavi would switch the desserts at the end, so we made ours wrong on purpose."

"But how did you see through our disguises?" Lavi cried out.

"The real Luna and Irene showed up while you two were busy dumping our pasta," Road deadpanned from beside Lenalee.

"Oh…"

"Well, boys, enjoy yourselves while you can, because I have a feeling Mel won't be going easy on you tomorrow," the little Noah teased as the rest of the girls giggled. Standing victoriously, they walked out of the cafeteria, leaving the men to ponder their fate.

Lavi turned to his teammates and tried to put on his best, most reassuring smile. "At least we tried out best, right guys?"

"We'll give you a 10 second head start," Allen warned as everyone moved to prepare their various weapons and torture devices.

Needless to say, Lavi ran, followed by a couple hundred men turned homicidal mobsters.

* * *

Mel: Well, that was fun! Hurray for 5,358 words! ^^

Lys: Are you actually going to honor your promise and give the girls immunity for a whole day?

Mel: Of course! *halo appears above head*

Lys: *sweatdrop*

Mel: I hope everyone liked this chapter and didn't find it too confusing. It may seem hard to believe, but all of this actually started out as a dance contest. Needless to say, it went through _a lot_ of changes. Feedback is greatly appreciated, so please review!

Lavi: *runs through room* SOMEBODY, SAVE ME!!!!!!!

*followed by giant mob of angry men with torches, pitchforks, and innocence*

Mel & Lys: O_O;


	9. Day 5: Cupcake Caper

Wow, for a minute there, I didn't think I'd be able to finish this chapter in time. My family and I are going to Philly tomorrow, which means no laptop for a couple of days. Good thing I wasn't too busy packing, or who knows when this would have been posted.

Anyway, thanks to _Candyone11_, _liledormouse_, _Zack1996_, _Iruchi-chan_, _Shoten Shinzui_, _Zenigami_, _.Fangirl_, _blood covered rose_, and _kate4394_ for your continuing support. *hugs everyone* I hope you all enjoy this chapter as much as I enjoyed writing it.

Disclaimer: Me no own DGM. But me happy it coming back this month. ^-^

I know all of my chapters so far have been random in nature, but Chapter 8 is even stranger than usual. Read at your own risk. ;)

* * *

All was silent and peaceful as the Devil's Hour (better known as 3:00AM) dawned on the Black Order. The usually-bustling hallways and corridors were now barren and empty, the only trace of human life being the soft lull of breathing and the occasional snore that escaped from behind the wooden doors of bedrooms. The cold nighttime air blew in from an open window, carrying the light of the full moon into the sleeping quarters of God's chosen warriors. It was truly a beautiful night, perfect for a romantic rendezvous of a deep introspection of one's soul.

Too bad the only one awake to appreciate the gorgeous scenery was the completely-not-serious-or-romantic Lavi.

"Where was that room again?" the red-head whispered to himself as he wound he way through the twisting halls. Normally, Lavi took pride in his natural sense of direction, but even he found the task of navigating headquarters in the middle of the night difficult.

"So this is how Moyashi-chan feels all the time," Lavi said under his breath, barely stifling a laugh as he walked past room after room. _"But now's probably not the time to be thinking about that,"_ the teen added solemnly in his head. After all, his very life could depend on finding that room.

* * *

FLASHBACK

* * *

"_N-n-now g-guys, can't we settle this without any v-violence?"_

"_Shut up, and hold still so I can chop your head off," Allen commanded darkly as a very pointy-looking Sword of Exorcism was held up to the red-head's neck. The exorcist's previous claim that his innocence couldn't harm humans probably should have comforted Lavi somewhat, but the fact that an equally-pointy Mugen was aimed at the bridge of his nose negated any calming effect this had on him. And the presence of an angry mob, complete with torches and pitchforks, wasn't helping much either._

"_How was I supposed to know things would end up this way?" Lavi pleaded, being careful not to touch the blades in front of him._

"_Doesn't matter. Your idea, your fault," Kanda replied coldly, moving his blade a millimeter closer to its target._

"_W-w-w-wait a second. I-I can fix this," Lavi stuttered as he went cross-eyed from staring at Mugen's tip._

"_And just how do you intend to do that?" demanded Allen._

"_Well, if I steal the Gilded Pen from Mel tomorrow, she won't be able to do anything for a whole day, so the girls' immunity will be completely wasted," Lavi reasoned, trying to sound as calm and confident as possible. Seeing the nods and approving murmurs from the mob, he quickly added, "I might even be able to keep it away from her for the rest of the week."_

_As if by magic, all the swords pointed at him were lowered, and the red-headed exorcist breathed a huge sigh of relief._

_But his breath caught in his throat when Kanda grabbed him by the collar and told him point-blank, "I swear, if you mess up again, you had better be prepared to have this sword shoved up your-"

* * *

_

Since he hadn't been paying attention to where he was going, Lavi strolled straight into a stone wall, effectively ending his reverie before he could recall Kanda's colorful use of the English language.

Resisting the urge to yelp in pain, the teen surveyed his surroundings, trying to figure out exactly where he had ended up. To his surprise and joy, he was in front of room 231, aka the room Mel and Lys were currently staying in.

"_And now to get to work," _Lavi thought as he pulled out the ring of keys Komui had lent him for the mission. He had thought about trying to convince Allen to come with him to pick the lock, but after that last close-up of Crown Clown, Lavi concluded it was probably better to keep his distance from the teen for now.

Being careful not to let the door creak, he swung it open just wide enough for him to sneak in. Inside, the room was fairly clean except for the papers filled with plans about God-knows-what scattered on and around the desk. That was probably a good thing, since as long as he avoided that area, Lavi wouldn't have to worry about stepping on some random rubber ducky and blowing his cover.

He glanced over to the bed, taking in the dilapidated state of the covers, the interesting position Mel was sleeping in, the small dribble of drool working its way down her chin, and the pink ball of fluff nestled in her loose hair. Lavi almost giggled at the absurdity of Lys, Mel's own personal killjoy, sleeping in her coffee brown locks as if she was Timcanpy's long lost sister.

"_Ok, now's not the time to lose focus,"_ Lavi mentally chastised himself. _"Now where does Mel keep that laptop…FOUND IT! It's right under…Mel's…arm..."_

And there it was. The Gilded Pen. The only way he would ever live to see tomorrow. Snuggled closely against Mel's chest, both arms embracing it as she snored like a lawn mower.

Things just got a little more complicated.

Thinking like the junior Bookman he was, Lavi quickly came up with a plan. Trying not to make too much noise, he stapled and taped together a pile of papers from the dump around Mel's desk that was about the thickness of the laptop (yes, she has _that_ many papers scattered around her room; don't ask why). He tiptoed his way towards the edge of the bed, intending to swap the two objects like they did in those action-packed spy movies.

But just as he reached his hand out to grab the computer, Mel's arms trapped his. Getting ready to drop down on his knees and start begging for mercy, he was startled when a snore echoed through the room.

"_What the…"_ Looking at the girl's face, he realized that she was actually still sound asleep; she grabbed his arm out of reflex, not intent to capture and maul him.

Sighing silently, he used his free hand to carefully move the laptop away from the sleeping teen and onto the floor. Just as he was placing the papers where the computer had been, Mel started chuckling darkly in her sleep. "Tyki-pon won't be able to get away that easily, kukuku…"

Of course Lavi had no way of knowing exactly what Mel was dreaming about, but given the fact that she was an obsessed, hormonally-unstable teenage fangirl, he really didn't want to stick around and find out. But he couldn't leave the arm she was holding onto behind, so after a little thought, he grabbed a feather from her leaking pillow and tickled the tip of her nose.

Just as he expected, she removed her arms to scratch her nose before going back to her original position, clutching the wad of paper as tightly as she had the Pen. Finally free, Lavi sprinted out the room, locked it behind him, and stood panting and leaning against the wall, beaming like an idiot.

He did it! He managed to get the Gilded Pen away from the lunatic known as Mel! Which meant that no one would have a reason to kill him tomorrow!! And he didn't have to pay that lawyer to draw up his will anymore!!!

"_I should probably go hide this now,"_ Lavi contemplated as he started walking back towards his room. But halfway there, something else occurred to him: _"You know, this is the only artifact of this kind in existence. I'll probably never get a chance to hold one again. Maybe if I just take a look…just for the sake of recording the world's hidden history…"_ His relatively innocent thoughts didn't match the mischievous glint in his eyes, however, as he discreetly entered his room. If he wanted to write an accurate record of the laptop, he would have to learn much more about it. And everyone knows the best way to learn is by doing…

* * *

THE NEXT MORNING

* * *

"OUCH!" Lenalee grabbed her forehead in pain as she landed on the hallway floor with a light thud. _"What did I run into?"_ she thought, surveying the space around her. No one was in the hall, and there were no objects she could've hit, so what could she have possibly run into?

Just then, she heard what sounded like leather rubbing up against a stone floor and very soft whimpering. This was followed by a high-pitched, feminine voice crying out, "Oh, Lenalee-chan, I am so so so so so so _so_ sorry!"

At first, Lenalee was about to run in the direction she had come from screaming "GHOST!" at the top of her lungs, but something about the voice made her pause. It sounded…familiar.

"Miranda…? Is that you?" the Chinese girl asked hesitantly. "Where are you?"

"I-I'm right in front of you, Lenalee-chan," the woman answered nervously. It sounded like she was fidgeting, uncomfortable with the whole situation.

Now Lenalee was confused. Her vision told her that she was alone in an empty corridor, but her hearing told her that her friend and fellow exorcist Miranda was sitting on the floor right in front of her. Not to mention she was sure she had hit _something_ just a minute ago. So just which of her 5 senses was she supposed to believe?

Suddenly, Miranda started sobbing hysterically. "Why can't anyone see me?!" she shouted. "I bumped into 5 finders this morning, and when I apologized, they called me a ghost and ran away screaming! Now not only am I useless, but I'm terrifying everyone too!!!"

"_I can understand why they would react that way,"_ Lenalee thought as a sweatdrop formed on her temple.

When Miranda's crying grew louder, the teen tried to calm her down. "It's okay, Miranda," she soothed. "Please calm down. It's not your fault, and I'm sure we can get you back to normal soon." Hearing the slight lessening of the woman's sobs, the girl suggested, "Why don't we go find my brother? Maybe he can help."

Still hiccupping from her episode, Miranda managed to whisper an "okay". When she heard the shuffling that meant the woman was getting up, Lenalee followed suit and started leading the way to the Supervisor's office.

"_Honestly, today is just getting weirder and weirder,"_ the Chinese exorcist thought to herself as she turned a corner. "_I know Mel is a strange girl, but even she wouldn't do something like this. Oh well, at least Miranda hasn't asked about…"_

"Um, Lenalee-chan, what happened to you?"

The girl sighed as she turned around to face her comrade (even though she couldn't see Miranda's face, it was still the polite thing to do) and explained passively, "I don't know what happened. I went to sleep normal and woke up like _this._"

Lenalee pointed to the grass skirt and fig leaf top she was currently wearing. Along with the wardrobe change, a new pair of small purple butterfly wings stood protruding from her back. But that wasn't what really bothered her about the whole ordeal.

What really bothered her was the fact that she had gone from a 5'5'' Chinese beauty to a 5'' pixie in the span of 8 hours.

Since she wasn't rude enough to mock the girl about her situation, but she wasn't clever enough to come up with good words of encouragement, Miranda decided not to comment on Lenalee's new look. Instead she just nodded understandingly and walked towards Komui's office, the girl flying (because walking would have taken _forever _at her size) close behind.

Neither of them said anything for a while, reveling in the unusual silence. For some reason, the Order's hallways were all but empty, which was probably a good thing since Lenalee was so angry that she would probably wring the neck of anyone who dared make a comment about how she suddenly became "vertically-challenged". Of course, her hands were far too small to actually facilitate manually choking someone, but she wasn't exactly thinking about details at the moment.

As the pair passed the cafeteria, they both heard a huge crash that almost made them jump out of their skins.

"Wh-wh-what was that?" Miranda stuttered fearfully as she cowered behind a potted plant that just happened to be nearby.

"I'm not sure. Let's go check it out," Lenalee suggested as she buzzed off towards the noise. Although she was reluctant to go, being left behind was much worse, so Miranda hurried after the girl, miraculously falling face-first only twice.

When the girls reached the cafeteria and looked inside, their eyes nearly popped out of their skulls. _"Okay, now __this__ is weird,"_ the two exorcists thought as they observed the situation unfolding in front of them.

The whole room was a mess. Directly in front of the girls, tables were overturned and used as barricades while finders, scientists, and exorcists alike all attacked a giant fortress erected on the far side of the dining hall. Surrounding the fort was an army 200 strong, throwing bomb after bomb at the poorly-supplied Order residents. Sitting at the top of the structure was none other than Lavi, who was busy laughing like a maniac and firing a bazooka at whoever dared raise their heads from behind the table-barricades. It was a regular warzone in there.

But instead of lobbing grenades and shooting guns, everyone was throwing pies and muffins. Lavi's evil army was composed of pink, purple, and sky blue unicorns armed with cheesecake cannons. And the fortress wasn't made out of steel and concrete, but of cupcakes and frosting. In short, it was a massively oversized food fight. Or rather a massively oversized cake fight.

To add to the oddity of the whole thing, every human besides Lavi had at least one "alteration" to their appearance. The ones who stuck out to the girls were Road, who was floating like a balloon, unable to stay near the ground without the help of a wire tied to one of the tables; Reever, whose skin had changed from its normal pale color to that of a piece of turquoise; Tyki, from whom small discharges of electricity were emanating, and whose hair was currently forming the biggest afro Miranda and Lenalee had ever seen; and Allen and Kanda, who had pink cat ears perched on their heads and matching tails on their bums.

The two exorcists could do little more than stand at the cafeteria entrance, mouths agape, trying in vain to rationalize what they were seeing. They were only snapped out of their stupor when Allen grabbed hold of them and dragged them behind a table, barely dodging a banana cream pie missile fired by Lavi.

"You guys have to be more careful. Getting hit with a pie flying at 50 mph is _not_ pleasant," Allen lectured as he helped the girls get into a more comfortable position in the safety of the barricade.

"Sorry, Allen-kun, we weren't paying atten - hey, how did you know Miranda was there?!" Lenalee asked suddenly.

"Oh, um…the cat ears kind of…enhance my hearing a little…" the boy replied, turning his head to the side in order to hide his red cheeks.

"Don't feel bad, Allen-kun. At least they're useful," Miranda pointed out, trying to make Allen feel more comfortable. It appeared to have worked, since he stopped blushing and smiled thankfully at the woman (or where she would be if she was visible).

"Anyway, what's going on here, Allen-kun?" Lenalee asked.

"Well, after people started waking up with gills, wings, and tails, everyone assumed it was Mel, so we all came to confront her in the cafeteria (since she always shows up here at one point or another). But when we finally got here…" Allen pointed behind him towards the giant cupcake mountain and army of girly horses. "Lord Usagi had already set up shop and started pelting us with various baked goods."

"Why would Lavi-kun ever do that?" questioned Miranda.

"Well, his first words to us when we came in were 'HAHAHAHAHA! RUN YOU FOOLISH MORTALS, BEFORE THE AWESOME MIGHT OF LAVI! I SHALL RULE THE WORLD WITH MY INVINCIBLE ARMY OF UNICORNS AND MY "FOOD-FLINGER 7500X" BAZOOKA! BWAHAHAHAHA!!!', so we theorize he wasn't thinking very much about the consequences of waging war in the dining hall and was _really_ bored." The two girls sweatdropped at not only what Lavi had said, but at how Allen had managed explain the whole thing, quote and all, with a straight face.

Wiping the sweat from her brow, Lenalee asked, "Well, how are we going to stop him?"

As Allen opened his mouth to answer, he was cut off by a very loud "WHAT THE HELL DID YOU JUST SAY?!?!" being yelled from a nearby barricade by a very pissed off samurai. Curious, the three exorcists made their way towards the yelling, avoiding several fruit tarts and sponge cakes along the way, until they caught sight of Kanda and Tyki trying to out-stare the other while Road and Reever tried to calm the two down. Apparently, these four were the Order's "strategists" on combating Lavi.

"I said, 'That is the most ridiculous, ill-thought-out plan I've ever heard of. A mentally-disabled monkey could come up with a more plausible plan,'" the Noah remarked as he looked down (both literally and metaphorically) on the fuming Japanese teen.

"Shut the hell up! You're the one who refused to walk through the battleground and just knock the idiot out! Afraid to ruin your $200 shoes?" Kanda retorted.

"At least I can afford quality clothing, peasant."

"Only because the Earl buys it for you, daddy's boy."

"Oh, what a great comeback. 'Daddy's boy.' Shakespeare must be turning in his grave out of envy for your amazing literary skills."

The argument continued on like this for a good while, and the trio soon decided that listening was a waste of time. Instead, they turned to study Lavi's giant fort. While Miranda and Lenalee were trying unsuccessfully to come up with a plan to attack Lavi head-on without being showered by baked good, Allen bent over a picked up an empty pie tin that still had the remains of its former resident inside.

"_God, I'm hungry. Why did this have to happen before I ate breakfast?"_ the white-haired boy thought, looking at the container wistfully. Sighing, he chucked the tin over the table towards the battlefield and sat on the ground, defeated. The tin went flying like a Frisbee towards the cupcake fortress, where the rim of it just barely touched the bottom corner of one of the cupcakes before falling to the ground.

Suddenly, there was a small rumble as several cupcakes fell onto the floor. The rumble slowly grew louder and more cupcakes tumbled out of place until the whole complex was literally wobbling back and forth.

"NOOOO, MY BAKED EMPIRE! NNNNNNOOOOOOOOOOO!!!" Lavi screamed as the whole fortress collapsed, burying him and his entire legion of unicorns in tons of sugar-laden sweets.

Everyone stared in shocked silence at the pile of edible debris for about 20 seconds before the cheering began. "HURRAY, THE RED-HEADED MENACE HAS BEEN DEFEATED!!!" they all chanted through the whooping and hollering.

Meanwhile, Reever, Road, Tyki, Kanda, Allen, Miranda, and Lenalee continued to stare at the giant pile of cupcakes on the ground, absolutely speechless. Finally, Reever said, "That's it? That's all we had to do? We wasted all morning trying to come up with an elaborate plan when all we needed was to throw a pie tin?!"

Before either Kanda or Tyki could give a rebuttal, everyone's attention was diverted to Allen, who had snapped out of his shocked trance, raced over to the gargantuan pile of baked goods on the ground, and gleefully exclaimed, "FFFFFOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOODDDDDDDDDD!!!"

And they all sweatdropped simultaneously as the boy literally dove into the impenetrable-fortress-turned-all-you-can-eat-buffet.

* * *

"_Can't…breathe…need…oxygen…what's that?...a light?...I'm saved!"_

With what little energy he had left, the teen tunneled his way through the remainder of the suffocating mini-cakes, gulping in huge mouthfuls of air as he finally breached the pile's surface.

"FINALLY, I'M FREE! TAKE THAT, EVIL MUFFIN WANNABES!!!" he shouted while pumping his fist into the air triumphantly.

Within seconds, he felt sharp metal just barely meet the delicate skin of his neck and heard "Baka Usagi" hissed through clenched teeth.

Laughingly nervously, Lavi looked up to meet the deadly glare of a very pissed off Kanda. "W-Wh-What's up, Yu?"

The responding growl and added pressure where Mugen met his neck made the red-head wince and close his eyes in anticipation of much pain.

"Where's the damn laptop, Usagi?"

Opening his eyes and blinking innocently, Lavi said, "I have no idea what you're talking about."

"Damn it, Lavi! Give me the accursed hunk of junk before I make a shish kabob out of your skull!" Kanda yelled as he moved Mugen from the teen's neck to right between his eyes.

"I don't have it here with me. If I did, it would've gotten covered in frosting and ruined," Lavi explained quickly.

"Then where is it?" Lenalee asked. After Kanda had threatened Lavi, everyone else had migrated over to the far side of the cafeteria to watch the exchange.

"I hid it in the Reference Section of the library because no one ever goes there," Lavi confessed. Much to his relief, Kanda resheathed Mugen and turned his back on the teen with a "che".

"Okay, we better go to the library and get the laptop before anything _else_ happens," Lenalee said.

With everyone nodding their heads in agreement, the entourage headed off to the Order's library, leaving the cupcake-littered cafeteria to be cleaned up by the ravenous unicorns and Allen.

* * *

MEANWHILE…

* * *

It was a sight that would have shocked any exorcist, scientist, or finder in the Order. In fact, it probably would have shocked anyone that had an IQ greater than -7 and didn't argue with the voices in their head on a regular basis.

Here was Komui Lee, _the_ Komui, the lazy Supervisor who had to be forced to finish his paperwork on threats of violence, in the library. _Reading_.

Totally unaware of how OOC this was for him, Komui hummed tunelessly to himself, searching through the shelves of the library's Reference Section. Just as he grabbed a book about advanced A.I. programming for robots, the book next to it titled "Rabbit Breeding for Dummies" fell from its shelf.

Not wanting to leave a mess behind (which was also majorly OOC), he picked the book up to put it back, but stopped when he noticed that the book was far heavier than a normal book that size should have been. Dragging it over to the nearest table, Komui opened the volume to find a giant space carved out of the books many pages with a shiny, golden slab sitting right in the middle.

Confused, but curious, the Chinese man gently removed the slab from its hiding spot. Once on the table, he immediately recognized the object as a laptop. A golden laptop. And there was only one person in the entire Black Order who had a golden laptop.

"_Why would Mel-chan put her laptop in a book and hide it in the library?"_ he asked himself. As fate would have it, Komui was one of the only people Lavi _didn't_ mess with that morning, and the man had only just woken up, so he didn't run into anyone in the hallway (everyone was already in the cafeteria at that point). Therefore, he had no idea that it was in fact Lavi who had hidden the laptop there, not Mel.

"I should probably give this back to Mel-chan," Komui thought out loud as he got up and headed out of the library.

But contradictory to his statement, he headed not towards Mel's room, but back to his office. Once inside, he locked the door and rushed over to his desk, swatting a giant pile of neglected papers off the desk to make room for his new treasure.

"Of course, I'm sure she won't mind if I try it out a little…"

If anyone had been out in the hallway to hear, Komui's evil cackles would have surely sent shivers down their spines.

* * *

5 MINUTES LATER

* * *

"FINALLY, THEY'RE ALL FINISHED!" Komui exclaimed, his voice and enthusiasm echoing in his newly-expanded office complete with a magical coffee dispenser that would never need refilling. He beamed as he took in the sight of his new legion of 234 Komurins, all made of innocence and dark-matter resistant materials and waiting for him to command them.

"I love this thing," Komui confessed as he hugged the Gilded Pen as if it was a favorite stuffed animal. Placing it lovingly on his new solid-platinum desk, the scientist turned to his creations and proclaimed, "And now it is time for my beloved children to go and make the world a better place by handing out wintergreen air fresheners and telling lost tourists the time and – hey, don't drink that!!!"

As Komui was busy giving his mad scientist rant that made absolutely no sense, all of his Komurins had snuck over to the coffee-dispenser and were enjoying 234 nice, hot cups of Columbian espresso.

Until the coffee hit their motherboards and caused them all to short circuit.

As 234 red eyes turned to glare at their creator, Komui laughed nervously as sweat rolled down his neck.

"Note to self: make a Komurin that doesn't go haywire when it drinks my coffee."

* * *

Lys: You let Lavi _and_ Komui get their hands on the Gilded Pen?! What the hell were you thinking, Mel?!?!

Mel: …

Lys: Er, Mel?

Mel: *snore*

Lys: What the…you're still asleep?!?!

Mel: *snore*

Lys: It's already noon, you lazy bum! Get up!!

Mel: *sleep-swats Lys into wall*

Lys: OW! Why you little…*screams in Mel's ear* WAKE UP!!!

Mel: …*snore*

Lys: Ugh, I give up! Since Mel seems to be in a coma, I guess I'll have to give the damn Author's Note. Mel hopes everyone wasn't too disappointed at the turn of events in this chapter. *mumbles to self* _I knew she would never keep her promise about the immunity thing…_ *normal voice* Anyway, since Sleeping Beauty here is probably going be out of commission for a while, I'll answer everyone's reviews and such. So don't be a lazy bum like this authoress and review!

Oh, and she wanted me to tell you all that the next chapter is a direct continuation of this one, and to please excuse the use of yet another cliff hanger.

Which reminds me, how is she going to write the next chapter if she's still asleep…? O.O


	10. Day 5: The Komurin Empire

Lys: Hey everybody. If you're wondering why I'm writing yet another Author's Note, it's because Mel _still_ hasn't woken up since the last chapter (I swear, she makes lazy bums seem like the most driven people on the planet).  
You're also probably (not) curious about how Mel managed to write this chapter while in a quasi-coma. Well…

Mel: *snoring and typing Chapter 10 in sleep*

Lys: And here I thought she was a just a normal, run-of-the-mill freak. How wrong I was…

Thanks to Zenigami, Iruchi-chan, Zack1996, crazy10118, nobodyknows, Karoomy-chan, and Yuki949 for the reviews and alerts. Also, sorry to anyone who did review/alert/fav this fic but was not added to the list. The FanFiction site was on the fritz during the last update, so some things may have been lost.  
Why is it that when I have to answer the reviews, the whole site crashes? T_T

Oh, and sorry about how late this update is. What with the authoress being half-dead and her choosing to write a chapter with 8,000+ words, it's a miracle this was even posted before September.

Disclaimer: Fortunately, Melody does not own DGM, Disney, or any of the other pop culture references in this chapter.  
Unfortunately, she owns me. Whatever did I do to deserve this? TT_TT

Remember, Chapter 9 was written by a comatose Mel, so it will probably suck.

Mel: *sleep-smacks Lys upside the head*

Lys: OW! *mutters under breath* Lousy creator…

_

* * *

As 234 red eyes turned to glare at their creator, Komui laughed nervously as sweat rolled down his neck._

"_Note to self: make a Komurin that doesn't go haywire when it drinks my coffee."_

_

* * *

_

10 MINUTES LATER

* * *

"Come on men, push!"

"We need more books over here!"

"Don't let them get in!"

Almost everyone was panicking and scrambling to find weapons/shelter as 5 unusually burly finders braced themselves against the Library door in an effort to prevent the Komurin Scourge from descending upon them. But as much as they wished to deny it, 233 Komurins could easily outlast 5 men, and the brave Soldiers of God were slowly losing ground.

"Gah, they're sticking their hands through the gap in the door!" one of the finders yelled, dodging a swing at his head while trying not to lose his grip on the door.

"What are you talking about? Those are _claws_, not hands," the man beside him corrected.

"Dude, those are totally hands. Can't you see the fingers?"

"Actually, those look more like tentacles to me," a third interjected.

"What the hell is wrong with you three?!" a fourth finder scolded. "Forget about the appendages' names and PUSH!!!"

The three men immediately came to their senses and resumed their pushing, but by that time, the Komurins had already made significant progress. Just as the first gleaming red eye became visible beyond the doorjamb, a female, slightly-panicky voice screamed, "TIME OUT!"

A bright light engulfed the door as it shut closed, barring the Komurins from any further attempt at entry.

A collective sigh of relief and various cheers resounded throughout the library as one of the 5 finders turned towards the source of the innocence invocation. "Miranda-san, thank you so much for your help."

"Y-your welcome, Jacob-san," the woman hesitantly answered.

"Um…"

"Don't worry, Jacob. Miranda just became invisible thanks to Lavi's idiotic pranks." The woman jumped a little when Reever appeared right beside her and answered the finder's question.

"Oh, okay, for a second there, I thought she was a ghost or something," said Jacob.

"You weren't the only one," Reever mumbled wearily. "Miranda-san," the man started, turning towards the German woman (or where she should be), "would you join us in the back of the library?"

"Of course, Reever-san," the exorcist immediately responded. After saying goodbye to the 5 finders, the two made their way past dozens of bookshelves towards the back of the huge room. There, a giant oak table stood, and all the exorcists and Noahs sat around it, waiting for the final arrivals. Once there, Miranda took a seat between Lavi and Lenalee, and Reever sat at the head of the table.

Looking at everyone with a solemn face, the Australian man cleared his throat and said, "Now that everyone is here, let's get down to business. We have 234 rouge Komurins outside, wreaking havoc on the Order. Everyone is in this room with the exception of Mel, Lys, and the Supervisor. All the Komurins outside are made out of some type of super material that is impervious to both innocence and dark matter as demonstrated by Kanda and Tyki mere moments ago."

Tyki just rubbed his forehead and blushed ever so slightly as Kanda che'd and looked away from the rest of the group. "I'm going to murder that man as soon as he fixes my sword," he declared as he glared at the library's entrance, tail flicking in agitation (he has a cat tail and ears, remember?).

"Normally, I would condemn such actions, but I might be willing to make an exception this one time…" Reever shook his head, mentally chastising himself for thinking about killing the Supervisor at such a critical time. "Anyway, we have to come up with a plan to overthrow the Komurins."

"Well, I had Timcanpy go and do some recon just now," Allen told the group. "Apparently, all the Komurins are taking orders from a single Komurin named 'Komurin X'. It is currently barricaded in Komui's office along with the Supervisor, the Gilded Pen, and 50 guards."

"There's no way we'll be able to attack them head on and steal the Pen with that many robots," Lenalee reasoned.

"Wait there's more," Allen interrupted. "Most of the corridors in the Order are being heavily patrolled, but the one near Mel and Lys' room is rather empty. Maybe she knows how to get to the Pen without getting us all killed."

"That's the stupidest idea I've ever heard, Moyashi," Kanda replied, voice dripping with contempt.

"First off, the name's Allen, BaKanda. Spell it with me: A-L-L-E-N." The white-haired teen took care to emphasize each letter as if he was talking to a two-year old. "Secondly, do you have any other bright ideas, oh smart one?"

Everyone turned expectantly towards Kanda, who just glared at Allen. After what seemed like an hour-long staring contest between the two, the samurai sighed and leaned back in his chair. Although it was hard to make out, defeat and shame flashed through his eyes, and his cat ears drooped.

"That's what I thought," said Allen, smirking victoriously from his seat.

"Che" was Kanda's monosyllabic reply.

"Okay, I guess we could go with Allen's plan," Reever said, "but how would we get to Mel's room?"

Before anyone else could respond, Lavi jumped out of his chair like a toddler running on Pixie Stix. "I know! There's an old ventilation system that runs through the entire HQ. Lenalee, Reever, Allen and I could crawl through the ducts all the way to Mel's room."

"I guess that will work, but why us?" asked an apprehensive Allen.

"We don't have time for details! Just hurry up and get in the vent!" Before the boy could retort, Lavi grabbed him by the shoulders, and in a classic display of conveniently-gained anime super-strength, hurled him into the closest vent, which just so happened to be right behind the table. Everyone except the red-head (even Kanda) cringed as Allen's head made contact with the solid metal grate, smashing it inwards and sending both it and himself down into a vent that went God-knows-where.

"Aah! What the hell is wrong with you?! Why did you throw my Allen-kun?!?!" Road exclaimed angrily as she moved to get out of her seat and ready her candles-from-hell.

However, her efforts to kill and maim the junior bookman were cut off when after letting go of her seat, she started floating up towards the library's 15-foot tall ceiling.

"Wah, help! I can't stop!" the girl screamed as she floated farther away from the group, unable to control her ascent.

Taking advantage of the well-timed distraction, the junior Bookman dived for the safety of the vent, grabbing Lenalee (since she's still a tiny fairy) and Reever's hand along the way. By the time Road had stopped rising and brought her candles out, the teen's laughter could be heard echoing from far away in the wall.

"Why that little…I'm gonna kill him!!!" she screamed as she took her anger out on the now-nearby ceiling. "And can somebody please get me down from here?!"

"Che." The samurai rose from his seat at the table and turned his face up to look at the pissed off Noah. "On one condition."

"What's that?"

"You let me kill the baka usagi for giving me these ridiculous cat ears."

"No way! He's mine!"

Just as Kanda was about to give a witty comeback, Tyki cut him off. "I have a solution you'll both be happy with." Midnight blue and gold eyes turned to stare curiously at the man. "Road can kill him first, have the Earl bring the boy back as an akuma, and then let Samurai-kun have his turn."

After a minute contemplating Tyki's proposal, the two would-be murders responded simultaneously, "Deal."

* * *

"Ugh, I feel like a woodpecker is trying to make a home in my head."

"Moyashi-chan, move faster," whined Lavi as he poked his friend onward.

"The name's Allen, and will you STOP POKING ME IN THE BUTT?!" Allen yelled at the top of his lungs, looking over his shoulder to glare holes in his "friend's" head.

"But it's the only way to get Moyashi-chan to move," said a pouting Lavi. "It's not my fault you're crawling so slowly."

"Actually, it is since you launched Allen into a solid steel grate," Reever deadpanned from behind the teens.

"Details, details," dismissed Lavi. Suddenly, the red-head's eyes lit up like New Year's Eve as he screamed, "WE'RE HERE!"

Without so much as a warning, Lavi pushed Allen with all of his strength, sending the poor teen through yet another steel grate and into the awaiting stone wall.

"LAVI, YOU MORON!!!" Reever yelled into his ear, but the exorcist didn't hear him; he was too busy trying to stay conscious through his laughing fit.

His fit was cut short, however, when what felt like a bullet made contact with his head and sent him flying into the wall right beside Allen.

"OW, THAT HURT!" he whined as he grabbed the back of his head. Pouting, he turned towards the culprit. "Lenalee-chan, that wasn't very nice. I can't believe you'd use your innocence on me!"

Lavi only pouted more as the girl ignored him and flew over to attend to the real victim of the ordeal. Judging from the gargantuan lump projecting from his head, he had met the stone wall at a fairly high velocity. "Allen-kun, are you okay?" she asked worriedly. "How many fingers am I holding up?"

After blinking six times and staring at the hovering Lenalee, Allen gave a dreamy smile and cooed, "Oo, it's the flapjack fairy. Can I have some maple syrup, please?"

Lavi's ensuing laughter was once again quelled by a Dark Boot meeting his skull. Once the red-head was moaning in pain, Lenalee turned towards Reever, panic plain on her face. "Is Allen-kun going to be okay?"

"I think so. Although that lump on his head is troublesome, he didn't completely lose consciousness, so I don't think Lavi did any _permanent_ damage," the scientist concluded.

"What a shame. Moyashi-chan is so much cuter like this!" Lavi exclaimed.

He grabbed his head yet again as he was struck for the third time today. But this time, the culprit wasn't an innocence boot.

"Bad, Bunny Lord, BAD!" Allen yelled childishly as he bonked Lavi with his left hand.

Ignoring the red-head's indignant whining, Reever walked over to Allen and gently grabbed his wrist. "Now, now, Allen, you can't beat Lavi up just yet. We still need to go wake up Mel-chan. Okay?"

"Okay!" the boy exclaimed as he smiled up at Reever.

The man could only sweatdrop as Allen ran over to stand in front of Mel's door, beaming like a toddler. "_I __really__ hope this isn't permanent_," the scientist thought as he got out his set of keys and went to work on the room's lock.

Swinging the door open, the four poked their heads in to find the room exactly as Lavi had left it 12 hours earlier: Mel laying on the bed, asleep and clutching papers to her chest while snoring loud enough to wake the dead.

"She hasn't woken up yet?!" Lavi asked unbelievingly.

Floating up so that she was right next to the girl's head, Lenalee said, "Mel-chan, wake up. Komui's unleashed a horde of Komurins, and we can't stop him without your help." To her and everyone's disappointment, the brunette didn't even so much as stir, let alone wake up.

"Maybe you need to shout louder," Reever suggested.

"Allow me." Lavi nudged Lenalee out of the way and bent down so his mouth was right next to Mel's ear. Taking in a huge breath, he bellowed, "MEL-CHAN, THIS IS LAVI SPEAKING! KOMUI HAS YOUR LAPTOP AND IS DESTROYING THE ORDER! **WAKE UP!!!**"

Reever, Lenalee, and Allen could barely see her hand as Mel swiftly punched Lavi into yet another stone wall.

"Yay, Bad Bunny Lord go boom boom!" Allen exclaimed while clapping. Sweatdropping, Lenalee and Reever went over to make sure the red-head was still in one piece.

"Well, at least you managed to wake her up," the Australian man pointed out as he helped Lavi to his feet. Once he was steady, Reever turned back towards the bed, but just as he was about to explain the whole situation to Mel, he was interrupted by yet another snore.

"Please don't tell me she punched Lavi in her sleep."

"She didn't punch me in her sleep."

"You're lying, aren't you Lavi?"

"Of course."

Reever sighed exasperatedly. "Great, this is just great. Now what?"

The four were a little startled when a foreign voice yawned from the bed. Turning, they saw Lys blinking sleepily at them. "What's with all the yelling?" she asked as she rubbed her eyes with her tail.

"Lys, thank god! Maybe you can help us. Lavi stole the Gilded Pen last night, and Komui got hold of it, and he built a giant army of Komurins, and now they're destroying headquarters, and we need Mel's help to stop them," Reever explained.

"Good luck with that. She could probably sleep through the entire building being burned to the ground," Lys ridiculed.

"But she woke up before today with no problem," Lenalee countered.

"Yeah, but last night, she decided to stay up until 2:30 AM reading fanfictions, playing with her plotbunnies, doing random searches on YouTube, and reading letters from _emailsfromcrazypeople .com_."

After a brief, rather awkward pause, Reever asked, "What's a fanfiction?"

"And what's a plotbunny?" Lenalee added.

"What are emails, and what do you mean by 'dot com'?" Lavi questioned.

"Whose tube was she searching?" Allen asked with wide eyes.

Realizing that she had just used 21st century lingo in front of 19th century exorcists (and a scientist), Lys quickly blurted out, "Never mind. It's not that important."

"Okaaaaaay. So what are we supposed to do now?" Reever asked, failing to hide the rising irritation in his voice.

"Well, I think I _might_ know a way to wake her up." Everyone perked up as Lys made her way to Mel's ear just like Lenalee and Lavi had. But instead of yelling (or, in Lavi's case, trying to Mel's ears bleed through sheer volume), the golem whispered as gently as possible, "Allen, Lavi, Kanda, and Tyki are all fighting downstairs to decide who gets to ask for your hand in marriage."

Within a second, Mel was on her feet and out the door, screaming at the top of her lungs in full fangirl fervor, "BISHIES, WAIT FOR ME!!!"

Even Allen in his altered mental state knew that this was the mother of all sweatdrop moments.

* * *

5 MINUTES AND A SHORT EXPLANATION LATER…

* * *

"So let me get this straight. You stole my laptop while I was asleep and decided to mess with everyone in the Order without me?!"

"Heh heh, well, 'stole' is such a strong word…"

"I'll deal with you later, Junior Bookman."

The teen audibly gulped at the glare and killing intent coming from the girl across from him. He knew from all the books he had read that a woman scorned was one of the scariest things on the planet, but a _fangirl_ scorned was a complete mystery to him. But it would probably be much worse judging from the creepy smile that had replace the girl's glare.

Although reluctant to draw Mel's attention to himself, Reever cleared his throat and asked, "Anyway, Mel-chan, do you have any ideas on how to deal with the Komurins?"

Much to the scientist's relief, the near-black aura surrounding Mel dispersed. She answered seriously, "Well, based on what you said, this Komurin X must have some type of wireless connection to all the other Komurins through which it can issue commands. If we manage to scramble the circuits of that one, the others should deactivate as well. But we'd need access to the equipment in the Science Department for that."

"We should be able to guard you while you're building the device," Lenalee suggested. "But I think we need to head back to the library first to get Kanda, Tyki, and Road. There's no way we'll be able to hold off all the Komurins by ourselves. Especially since Allen…" Lenalee's voice faded as she eyed the boy sympathetically. He was currently curled up against Mel and taking a nap like the animal whose ears and tail he currently had.

Gently petting the boy's head, Mel nodded her head in agreement. "Well then, let's get going then!" Lavi exclaimed. He scrambled into the vent just outside the room in the hallway. "Hurry up you slow pokes!" he yelled eagerly.

"Um, why don't we just have Allen open a door using the Ark?" Mel asked.

Judging from the murderous auras engulfing Reever and Lenalee and Lavi's whimpering coming from the vent, the brunette was quickly able to deduce that Lavi had dragged them into the vents before anybody had the chance to suggest another course of action. And the bump on Allen's head hinted at who had "crawled" in first.

"I'll just wake Allen up and have him make a door then," Mel said in a low, hesitant voice, trying not to make the situation in the room any worse. "Allen-kun, could you please get up and open the Ark for us?"

Slowly opening his eyes, the boy blinked sleepily at Mel. Then, without warning, he leaned his head on Mel's shoulder.

Before she could ask what he was doing, she felt him breathing deeply. "Melly-chan's hair smells so nice, nya~" he whispered softly.

Reever and Lenalee's plotting of Lavi's death came to abrupt end when they heard a loud thump coming from the bed. Turning around, they discovered that Mel had fallen off the bed and landed on the floor face-first. Alarmed at her lack of movement, the two rushed forward to check on her condition, but they stopped when Lys said, "Don't worry, she just fainted."

"Why did she faint?"

Lys pointed her tail at Allen, who was still on the bed and leaning over to see why "Melly-chan" had decided to take a nap on the floor.

The scientist gave an exhausted groan and muttered, "Great, now we have to wake her up _again_."

* * *

"This is so lame! Why are we here guarding the laboratory? No one is going to be able to reach it with all of the other guards in the hallways."

"I know! The Boss is squandering our talents."

"Stop complaining, Komurins XXI and XXII. You should be honored to be given this assignment. What would happen if one of those troublesome scientists managed to make his way here?"

The two Komurins sneered at their superior. "Everyone knows this is just a job given to noobs who the Boss does not trust in combat," the first one countered. "So please stop with the high-and-mighty act. You are making me gag."

"Yeah," the second added while sipping his Triple Mocha Latte. "We are not idiots, you know."

The lead Komurin, Komurin XIII, twitched as he looked at his underlings goofing off. He grumbled, "You ungrateful bastards…"

But before he had the chance to grill the two on _why_ no one trusted them in an actual fight, he was interrupted by the sound of sobbing and fast-falling footsteps. Turning to face the noise, all three Komurins caught sight of a disheveled looking Lenalee holding her face in her hands at the lab's entrance.

Now, even though all of the Komurins had rebelled and taken over the Black Order, they were still Komurins, robots made by an idiot scientist with a serious sister-complex, so they still had the instinct to protect a certain Chinese exorcist. Seeing the main focus of their protection-programming distraught made all three gasp. "What is wrong, Lady Lenalee?" Komurin XIII asked.

Looking up to face the robots, all three were shocked to see the normally-bright Chinese beauty staring at them with puffy eyes and tear-stained cheeks. "Allen, he…he…he tried to kiss me!" she stuttered before breaking down into hysterics and falling to the floor, face buried in her knees.

"WHAT?! Do not worry Lady Lenalee, we shall bring that demon to justice," the robot comforted. Turning to his two comrades, he bellowed, "Komurins, move out!"

All three ran out of the room, leaving the weeping girl alone in the Science Department. Once she could no longer here their footsteps, she abruptly stopped crying. Standing up, she casually brushed the dust from her skirt and used a handkerchief to wipe her eyes. "Ok, you guys can come in now!" she called to the ceiling.

Out of nowhere, a heart-shaped door appeared and opened to reveal Road's weird "dream world". The first person out was Mel, who beamed at the Chinese girl and exclaimed, "Nice one, Lenalee! I never knew you could act so well."

"Yeah, I wonder what else you've lied about over the years," Lavi said suggestively as he walked out followed by Reever, Kanda and Tyki.

"That's for me to know, and for you to never find out," Lenalee answered with a wink.

"Hm, looks like the girl's not as innocent as she looks," Tyki said, eyeing the girl in a way that probably would have sent the man straight to the top of Komui's black list.

"Come on! Focus, people!" Reever scolded. "You guys guard all the entrances while Mel and I work on the signal scrambler. And Road, would you please stop glomping Allen already?!"

Road pouted from just inside her door. "But he's not complaining about it!"

"That's because he's recovering from brain damage, and you know it!"

"Lolli-chan, can I have another lollipop? Pretty please?" Allen asked with giant, sparkly eyes.

"Oh course, my adorable Allen-kun!" And with a snap of her fingers, a giant rainbow swirl lollipop appeared in her left hand, making the white-haired boy clap and giggle with glee.

Reever just sighed and rubbed his temples. _"I'm going to end up with a migraine at this rate,"_ he thought to himself. Coming to the conclusion that Road was more trouble than she was worth, he gave in. "Fine, you can stay with Allen, but can you at least go and guard one of the entrances?"

"Okay! Let's go, Allen-kun!" The Noah jumped off of the boy and dragged him by the hand to lab's southern entrance.

Sighing yet again, Reever turned to everyone else and told Lavi and Kanda to guard the western entrance while Lenalee and Tyki would guard the northern entrance, which was right next to where he and Mel would be making the device. Of course, Kanda started arguing about getting paired up with the "baka usagi", but a stern look from Lenalee quickly ended the dispute.

With the lab fully secured, the blonde and brunette set about working on their weapon against the Komurins. To Reever's surprise, Mel was quite well-versed in the art of soldering and electrical wiring. When he asked where she learned such things, her face contorted in a grimace. "Half is from school, and half is from my dad who enjoys ranting about how to fix computers while I'm trying to watch NCIS on the living room TV," she said, saying the last part through gritted teeth. Even though he was curious about what a TV and NCIS was, Reever decided against pushing the subject and returned his attention to the task at hand.

After only ten minutes of working, Kanda yelled from his entrance, "Oi, are you two done yet?"

"Patience is a virtue, Kanda. You can't rush perfection," Mel calmly stated while soldering two copper wires together.

"I'm not rushing perfection, I'm rushing you."

The girl only chuckled, imagining how Lavi was inevitably bothering the samurai right now about his utter lack of waiting skills.

Her fun came to an abrupt end when an explosion sounded from the western entrance.

"_Damn, how did the Komurins find us so fast?!"_ the girl and Reever thought as another explosion came from the southern entrance.

"Lavi, Kanda, Allen, Road, are you all okay?" Reever yelled over the sound of crunching metal.

"We're fine! Hurry up and finish the scrambler so we can get out of here!" Lavi shouted back.

Nodding, the two returned to their work, determined to finish before anyone got seriously injured.

To make things go faster, Mel worked on the device while Reever handed her the things she asked for. Without looking up, she listed the tools she needed. "Screwdriver. Soldering iron. Copper wire. Cookie."

"What?" Reever asked, thinking he misheard the girl.

"Cookie, I said cookie! I can't work on low blood sugar!" To Reever's absolute astonishment, Mel managed to say that all with a straight face.

"How can you be thinking about food at a time like this?!" The man had to scream to be heard over the crushing of metal and Road's sadistic cackling. "I'll give you cookies later!"

"Fine," Mel snapped. After a couple more minutes of tinkering, Mel lifted the device over her head triumphantly. "It's finished! Now we just have to prepare for the final assault on-"

"INCOMING!"

The two scientists turned around just in time to see a 10 foot-tall Komurin with giant razor-sharp teeth and multiple tentacles come charging at them. Just as the teeth were about to make contact with Mel's delicate face, a humongous hammer came crashing in, smashing the robot like a bug.

"Hah, take that, ya pile of scrap metal!" Lavi exclaimed while punching the air victoriously.

An "ahem" brought his attention back to his charges, and the smile momentarily left his face.

In front of him were Reever and Mel, covered in motor oil and frowning deeply at the teen.

Scratching the back of his head sheepishly, Lavi avoided their eyes and laughed nervously. "Wow, that guy was pretty well lubricated, huh?"

* * *

Things were going great for Komurin X. After having drunk some of his creator's espresso, he felt supercharged, like he could take on the world. So he seized control of his 233 brethren, tied and gagged his creator, and set about taking over the Order. Once he finally got his hands on all those finders and scientists hauled up in the Library, he would have a secure base of operations from which to initiate the rest of his plan.

Yep, the world was looking pretty bright for our shiny friend.

Looking around at his awesome army standing at attention in his creator's office, the robot cackled evilly and shouted to the heavens, "BWAHAHAHAHAHA! SOON ALL THE PREPARATIONS SHALL BE COMPLETE, AND MY MINIONS SHALL CONQUER THE WORLD OF THE PATHETIC MEATBAGS! BWAHAHAHAHAHA!"

"How can this be?! I made my Komurins perfectly; why is one of them giving a corny super villain speech?!"

Something in the Komurin short-circuited as he turned to face his creator. "Silence, human! I am not corny!" he boomed.

Rather than be scared, the Chinese man just gasped indignantly. "How dare you talk to your creator that way?! I ought to wipe your whole hard drive for saying something so blasphemous!"

The man was about to say something else about how the robot was shaming the beret he was wearing, but he immediately shut up when a very large, very deadly laser gun was pointed at his face. "I am sorry, could you please repeat that?" the robot asked in a creepy yet polite voice.

"I-I said, you are the g-greatest robot ever created a-and I could never d-dream of creating a b-b-better one because you surpass m-me in every way," Komui stuttered, staring down the barrel of the gun.

"That's what I thought you said," the robot remarked as he put away the gun.

Just then, one of his guards ran into the office. "Commander, the enemy forces have infiltrated Sector V and are heading this way right now!" he reported.

"Have all guards converge on their location. I want them beaten to a pulp," Komurin X commanded.

"NO, NOT MY LENALEE!"

"And will someone put the gag back on this idiot? I don't know how he got out of the first one, but he is starting to give me a headache," he added.

Just as Komui was once again gagged, a loud, thundering sound started coming from the entrance to the room. Noticing that it was growing in volume, Komurin X quickly had all of his personal guards get into battle formation in front of the door. The sound continued to grow louder and louder, echoing throughout the huge office to the point where Komui wished his hands weren't tied so he could cover his poor ears. Then, the door was suddenly disconnected from its hinges and flew into the wall behind Komui's desk, quickly followed by a rather unfortunate Komurin that happened to be guarding the door seconds earlier.

In the space left by the door stood our eight heroes armed with innocence/dark matter/whatever Reever, Mel, and Kanda (who had his innocence broken earlier by a Komurin) could find, riding atop eight majestic…unicorns?

"_It's a good thing the unicorns Lavi made earlier weren't deleted. This is just the thing we needed for a truly epic entrance,"_ Mel excitedly thought.

Dramatically pointing her index finger at the lead robot like people always do in action animes, Mel announced, "Prepare yourself, Komurin X, for the awesome might of Team AlphaSuperAwesomeCoolDynamiteWolfSquadron!"

An awkward silence crept over the room as no one knew how to follow that…"epic" declaration.

Finally, Kanda managed to articulate everyone's thoughts in one, eloquent sentence: "Where the hell on this god forsaken planet did you get _that_?"

"From the DreamWorks movie, _Shrek the Third_," the girl answered simply and honestly. "I just love Donkey. He's so funny!"

The awkward silence from before was soon joined by 242 sweatdrops and silent assertions that Mel had just redefined the word "freak".

Only then did it occur to Komurin X that he was being outdone by a little girl in the sweatdrop-inducing/corny-rant-department. Refusing to be second best, he epically exclaimed, "You shall never succeed in defeating my army!"

"We'll see about that! Fantastical unicorn cavalry, CHARGE!" Despite the mortifying-beyond-all-reason name they were just called, the gang moved out to begin the first phase of their offensive strategy.

Which was no strategy at all since Mel was too preoccupied with making all the unicorns "battle-ready" (aka grooming them until their coats sparkled), so they all just started thrashing as many robots as possible.

"Ozuchi Kozuchi: Gouka Kajin Hiban!" A giant fire serpent erupted from Lavi's hammer and swept through the office, engulfing 4 Komurins in its inferno. "Ha, take that, rust buckets!" Lavi mocked.

2 seconds later he had to duck to avoid a foot long bullet aimed at his head. "What the hell?! Since when were Komui's robots melt-proof?!?!" the exorcist complained as he tried to put out the fire that had ignited in his fire-red hair.

"Baka Usagi, you really are useless," Kanda insulted as he sliced through tentacles and claws while staying perfectly upright in his saddle. "I've been reduced to using this cheap stick somebody dared call a sword, and I'm still outdoing you."

"You sound rather confident, Yu. May I interest you a little gentlemanly wager?" Lavi asked mischievously as he crushed three approaching robots with his hammer and his unicorn impaled a fourth in the chest.

"Che, like I'd make a bet with a baka usagi like you."

"What's the matter, Yu-chan? You're not _scared_, are you?" The junior bookman's heart nearly jumped out of his chest as Kanda swiped right above his head, causing the end of a Komurin that shared a striking resemblance to a squid as well as a little of the teen's hair.

"Name your price," the samurai muttered darkly.

Automatically perking up at the agreement, Lavi happily suggested, "Let's see how many Komurins we can beat up. Loser has to be Mel's slave for the rest of the week."

"Why are you including that otaku freak in the bet?"

"She would probably come up with something three times more embarrassing than anything I've ever done," answered Lavi.

"Che, fine, but don't whine when you lose." Kanda smirked as he directed his unicorn away from the rabbit and closer to the action.

"Good luck to you too!" a beaming Lavi shouted after him before getting back to the business of playing whack-a-Komurin.

On the other side of the room, Tyki found himself in an…interesting situation.

He had just been pulling circuits out of Komurin after Komurin (being careful to avoid the parts of their bodies that reflected dark matter; he already had a big enough lump on his head from that, thank you very much) when he heard his "niece" giggling nearby. Directing his unicorn over there, he discovered something rather odd.

Road was hosting a tea party, and guess who the guests were?

"Would you like more tea, Mr. Komurin XXXV?" Road asked in a sugary voice.

"Yes, thank you ever so much, Lady Road," one of the robots sitting around the table replied, reaching over to take the cup the girl offered while being careful not to wrinkle its new lavender dress.

"My pleasure!" she beamed.

Sensing another person's eyes on her, the Noah turned to see the comical sight of both her "uncle" and his horse staring wide-eyed, mouths agape.

After opening and closing his mouth multiple times, Tyki regained some of his composure and told the girl, "You know what, I don't need to know. I'll be over there ripping out mechanical hearts if you need me."

But before he could leave, a lightning snake came out of nowhere and fried Road's tea table along with all of her "guests".

"Gah! Bookman Jr., you just ruined my tea party!" Road whined while crossing her arms.

"Sorry, Road-chan!" the teen yelled from his spot 7 feet away. He turned to his left and shouted, "Hey Yu, how many Komurins have you gotten rid of?"

"15," the samurai grunted as he beheaded the robot his unicorn had just speared.

"Yay, I got 17! I'm winning!!!" Lavi cheered.

"I wouldn't brag too much if I were you, Lavi," Mel said as she approached the teen from the right. "Lenalee's already taken care of 21, and Allen's almost at 35."

"Wow! How did Moyashi-chan get that many?" Lavi asked.

"Well…" The girl pointed towards the far end of the room, where the white-haired exorcist was swinging his Sword of Exorcism left and right, causing explosion after fatal explosion. He looked like a little kid frolicking through a field of flowers.

"Wee, this is fun!~ I like making evil beret gnomes go boom!~"

"…Did I ever mention how sorry I was for smashing Allen's skull in so many times?" asked Lavi as he wiped away his sweatdrop.

"HALT!" The two teens turned together towards the sound to see a rather skinny, scrawny-looking machine that barely reached Mel's knees pointing an accusing finger at them. "You shall all stop and tremble in fear once you see the awesome might of Komurin CCXXXIII! I shall inflict unimaginable pain on all of y-" Right in the middle of the robot's spiel, he was knocked in the back of the head by a stray piece of Komurin debris. Not having much strength, he fell face-first and smoke started to curl up from where he was hit, indicating that he had short-circuited himself to an early (and very anticlimactic) demise.

Mel and Lavi sweatdropped at the robot's untimely death. "Something tells me Komui wasn't really trying very hard by the time he got to #233," the girl thought aloud.

"Yeah, and I think he was running out of inspiration for weapons, too," the boy added. "Who equips a killer robot with a slingshot?"

Sure enough, still clasped in the robot's lifeless hand was a simple wooden slingshot, made with nothing more than sticks and a rubber band.

Suddenly, a lit, compact fluorescent light bulb appeared above Mel's head. "I just got a brilliant idea!" she exclaimed. Reaching down, she grabbed the slingshot and loaded the Komurin Signal Scrambler Deluxe she and Reever had just made. She raised the "weapon" to eye level, and aimed at Komurin X, who was busy cackling and taunting the still-tied-and-gagged Komui.

Just as she was about to fire the device, though, her face changed from one of concentration to one of confusion, then to one of deep thought. Turning her head to face Lavi, she asked in a completely serious voice, "What should I say?"

"What do you mean, Mel-chan?"

"Well, I'm about to kill the main villain and save everyone, so I need a catchy phrase to complete the moment."

"I really don't think that's necessary…"

"Oh wait, I got it!" Mel interrupted, sparkles in her eyes. She took aim again and said in the most badass voice she could manage, "Hasta la vista, baby."

As if in slow motion, the scrambler shot out of the slingshot and miraculously avoided all the flying metallic limbs and assorted weapons to hit Komurin X squarely on the chest. Immediately, sparks of electricity engulfed him, and he fell to his knees in agony. "NO, THIS ISN'T POSSIBLE! MY EMPIRE! NNNNNNNNNNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!" Finally, the robot's head exploded, sending out a decently sized plume of black smoke. Within seconds, all the other Komurins short-circuited and met a similar fate.

"Good job, Mel-chan!" Reever praised as he led his unicorn over the Komurin remains. "It worked just like you said it would. The Supervisor could learn a few things from you."

"Oh, that reminds me!" Mel exclaimed. In the blink of an eye, she pulled out a rope and tied Lavi's hands together.

"What the-"

"Now, now, Lavi-kun, you didn't think I forgot how this whole thing started, now did you?" Even though Mel was smiling and her voice was cheery, shivers were sent down Lavi's spine.

"Actually, I was you had," he replied nervously.

The girl clucked her tongue in disappointment and put a rope around his unicorn's neck so that she could lead it away. Turning back to face the rest of the group, she smiled again and said as sweetly as possible, "If you will all excuse us. This might take some time."

"By all means, go ahead," Tyki encouraged.

"Thanks, Tyki-pon! Lavi-kun, let's go pick up Komui-san. Then we can go have a little chat!~"

Seeing Mel's creepy smile and his "friends' " smirks made Lavi come to the most depressing conclusion of his young life:

He and Komui were going to die, and there was no one to save them.

* * *

Life just kept getting better for Lavi and Komui.

When Mel had gone to pick up the restrained Supervisor, she had decided that it would be easier to drag the two captives with her unicorn instead of letting them ride on Lavi's.

After being dragged behind a magical horse's bottom for 30 minutes and down 6 flights of stairs, the pair finally recognized where they were in the Order.

Mel had brought them to the abandoned dungeons in the basement, aka the only place in a 50 mile radius where there were chains, torture devices, and sound-proof walls.

Wearing a smile eerily similar to the one Road always had when she was "playing", the teenage girl jumped off her stead and unlocked one of the dungeon doors. Jubilantly, she used both hands to throw Lavi and Komui into the cold, damp cell where they landed with two loud, echoing thuds.

Despite being tied up, Lavi managed to squirm around until he could look Mel directly in the face. "Wh-what are you going to do to us?" he asked, silently cursing himself when his voice came out 2 octaves too high, showing his fear.

"Me? I'm not going to do anything. You two will just be sitting in this room for the next 8 hours, thinking about what you have done," Mel replied.

"That's it?"

"Yep." Then, to both Lavi's and Komui's surprise, Mel skipped into the room and cut the ropes binding the two. She also finally removed the gag from Komui's mouth. "You won't be needing these ropes in here," she sang as she skipped back out, leaving the two men speechless. "Enjoy your stay!" And she shut the door behind her, locked it, and rode away on her trusty stead.

Once he was sure the girl was out of earshot, Komui let out a long sigh of relief. "And here I thought we were going to be killed or something," he said.

"Yeah! I guess Mel's not as evil as we thought," Lavi concluded, moving to lean against the wall. If he was going to be sitting in here for 8 hours, he might as well get comfortable. Komui, seeing no better option, mirrored the red-head's movements.

Just as the two were about to doze off, something caught Lavi's attention. "Hey, do you hear something?" he asked the man sitting next to him.

"I think it's music. Why would she play music in the room?" Komui asked, scratching his head.

All of a sudden, Lavi's face fell. His only visible eye grew to twice its original size, and his skin paled significantly. "This isn't just any old music." The voice Lavi spoke in was devoid of all life and hope. "This is Disney's _It's a Small World After All_."

"What's so bad about that?" the Supervisor asked nonchalantly. "It's only a song. What could happen?"

* * *

2 MINUTES LATER

* * *

"I'M NEVER GONNA GET THIS SONG OUT OF MY HEAD!" Lavi screamed at the top of his lungs. The boy started banging his head against the stone wall of the cell, figuring that he would either lose consciousness or lose enough brain function that the song would magically stop bothering him. "CURSE YOU, BOOKMAN BRAIN! WHY MUST YOU TORTURE ME SO?!"

Meanwhile, Komui was busy trying in vain to curl up in a little ball and disappear. "Mommy, make the bad noise go away! I'll be a good boy, I promise!" he begged in a voice more worthy of a 6 year old you accidently walked in on an uncensored screening of _Saw_ than a full-grown man.

Both of their mental breakdowns were currently being projected on the wall of Komui's office. Since he had made it so huge with the help of the Gilded Pen, Mel decided that before she returned it to normal, she would hold a live screening of the men's "punishment" for the whole Order to see. Pretty much everyone was there, and scattered throughout were giant bags of popcorn and jumbo sized bags of candy that people munched on while watching.

Mel herself was enjoying the show from Komui's fancy new desk (which she would return to normal as well), enjoying a nice bag of Skittles and a cup of Coke. Sitting on the desk was Lys, who decided that she would show up after all of the action-packed scenes and look at the latest "brilliant idea" her mistress had come up with.

She sort of wished she didn't.

"Don't you think you took the whole punishment thing a little too far?" she asked, mildly disturbed by the sound Lavi's head was making each time it made contact with the wall.

"What makes you say that?" Mel asked in a cheery voice, free of any worry or guilt.

After hitting his head for the 7th time, Lavi finally fainted and was lying motionless on the cold ground. Komui had stopped asking for help and was now sucking his thumb while rocking back and forth, eyes wide in panic and fear.

When she saw it, Mel didn't even bat an eyelash.

Somewhere is Lys' brain, a little voice was shivering and saying, _"She's. Not. Human."_

_

* * *

_

I'm such an evil authoress sometimes. I should be ashamed that I even thought about using such a horrible torture on the characters of my favorite manga.  
Too bad I'm not. X3

If you don't know what this song is, you can search for it on YouTube. But be warned, it is very **very** annoying. I only managed to listen to 2 ½ minutes out of 6. .  
And no, this form of torture was not all my idea. I first heard it on the crime drama NCIS. Very funny show, I highly recommend it. ^^  
I also recommend that website I mentioned in the fic (emails from crazy people .com (be sure to remove all the spaces when typing in the site)). It's hilarious, but I can only hope that the majority of the letters on that site are false. Otherwise, I fear for the future of the human race. =_=;

As I'm sure you all know by now, reviews make the world go round, so if you don't want the Earth to hurtle into the Sun, press the little green button underneath this note and leave a couple of words on what you thought about this chapter. ^-^


	11. Day 6: Why Oatmeal and Gnomes Don't Mix

I am SSSSSSSSSOOOOOOOOOOOO sorry everyone!!! I haven't updated in a month, and I feel absolutely horrible about it! ToT Blame my freakish school; it doesn't end until **4:10pm**! There are people who have full-time jobs with better schedules than mine! DX

Since my school of freakishly-long-hours-and-oodles-of-homework is now in full swing, future updates to this fic will be unbelievably slow. Please know that in no way am I abandoning this fic or putting it on hiatus. I will work on it as often as possible, so please be patient with me! This fic will most definitely have an end in the near future! *strikes heroic pose*

As I do before all of my chapters, I would like to personally thank everyone who reviewed the last chapter. kate4394, crazy10118, Zenigami, Karoomy-chan, Yuki949, Shoten Shinzui, Candyone11, and Zack1996, you guys are amazing! ^o^

Disclaimer: This is now the eleventh time I'm writing this. Time sure flies by when you're torturing fictional characters. XD As always, I cannot nor will I ever claim to own any of the exorcists, Noahs, finders, or scientists that make -Man such a wonderful and thrilling tale.

Please note: Chaoji and Timothy do not exist in this fic. Why? Because Chaoji is annoying, and having Timothy around would undermine my character's juvenile behavior. Good reasons, right? ;3  
Also, may all the fangirls of DGM know that Komui, Lavi, and Allen have made full mental/physical recoveries since the end of the last chapter. So you can take me off of your hit lists now. Okay? ^^UU

Now, while I work on writing shorter Author's Notes (^^;), please enjoy Chapter 10. ^-^

* * *

Kanda wanted to maim something. It's true, he really did. And it wasn't the usual skin-Lavi-with-Mugen urge either; that lapse in self-control could always be corrected by a well-placed Lenalee. No, this urge was much, much, _much_ stronger. So strong, in fact, that the samurai was seriously considering plans to evade the police and flee the country. Or to kill all of England's law enforcement officers in under 15 minutes. Most likely the latter.

Things had been rather peaceful for Kanda this morning. He woke up before dawn as he usually did and went to one of the training rooms for his daily regimen of meditation and target practice. To his surprise and relief, the baka usagi commonly referred to as Lavi didn't interrupt his training session. It was truly a miracle to behold, and he enjoyed every blessed second of it. After that, he headed to the cafeteria to order some soba for breakfast, knowing full well that the silence he had been enjoying would probably end at the dining table with Lavi's late appearance. But, lo and behold, the rabbit _still_ didn't show up, even after Kanda had been eating for a full 20 minutes. He was actually starting to get excited about the teen's disappearance. Maybe he got run over by a cart and died a horrible, excruciating death!

Of course, that didn't happen. What _did_ happen was that the idiot came bursting through the doors a minute later, bringing with him the damned moyashi and those accursed Noahs (Lenalee, Krory, Miranda, and Marie also came in with the rabbit, but Kanda didn't really mind their company). And to top it all off, _she_ skipped in right after them.

Kanda used to rate everyone in terms of annoyingness using Lavi as the "gold standard". He thought there was no creature, human or otherwise, on the face of the planet that could be worse than the damn usagi. Unfortunately for his paper-thin patience, he was wrong and was now faced with the challenge of designing a new scale that would include Mel in its calculations.

But that's not important right now. As I mentioned before, Kanda wanted to maim something. Why? Because once his very unwelcomed guests reached his table, Lavi decided that he _had_ to sit next to Kanda, and the moyashi decided that he _had_ to sit on the other side of the samurai. So now Kanda was being showered with the moyashi's food debris while being poked in the arm by the usagi, who was currently whining, "Yyyyyyyyyyyyyyyuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu~!"

"_Fml,"_ Kanda thought as his eye twitched in pent-up rage. _"Wait a minute…DDid I just use an __acronym__?! OMFG, WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH ME?!?! Wait…omfg…"_

Without thinking, Kanda let out a huge groan and slammed his head into the solid wood table with quite a bit of force. This, of course, had the unintended effect of catching the attention of everyone at the table. "Ne, are you okay, Yu-chan?" Lavi asked in concern.

"I'm sure he's fine," Allen said nonchalantly after he swallowed his last morsel of food. "He probably just realized how mentally-challenged he really is."

"What did you just say, Moyashi?" Kanda hissed, murderous intent climbing off the charts.

Allen, however, was not intimidated. "For the billionth time, my name is Allen! I am not a freaking beansprout!!"

Kanda smirked at the teen's obvious irritation. "Really? Then what are you? A shrimp? Midget? Elf? I'm quite partial to 'gnome' myself."

At the mention of the word "gnome", the normally-level-headed Allen snapped. It took everything Krory and Marie had to keep the suddenly livid exorcist from attempting to choke the samurai.

"WHEN I GET MY HANDS ON YOU, THERE WON'T EVEN BE ENOUGH OF YOUR REMAINS TO BURY!!!" Allen shouted as he thrashed around in his friends' grasp like some sort of deranged jaguar.

From his seat on the other side of the table, Tyki gave a low whistle at Allen's declaration of homicidal intent. "I didn't know the shounen could be so violent," he commented, sounding just a little wary of the extent of the boy's rage.

"Yeah, I think you might have overdone it a little, Yu," Lavi said meekly.

"Che, who asked you?" Kanda replied smugly. He turned back to watch Allen babbling on about how he was going to kill him while trying to break free from Krory and Marie's iron grip.

And then, it happened.

"DAMN YOU, YOUR SWORD, AND ALL THE SOBA ON THIS DAMNED PLANET, YOU FREAKING _CROSS-DRESSER!!!_"

Kanda went stiff as a board while everyone else felt their faces drain of all color and warmth. After what seemed like an eternity, Kanda mumbled "cross-dresser?" in a barely audible voice.

In the blink of an eye, he drew Mugen and pointed it at the white-haired exorcist. "FOR THAT, I'LL SLASH THAT FREAKING HEAD OFF YOUR FREAKING SHOULDERS, MOYASHI!!!!!" he shouted at a volume equivalent to Allen's.

Without need of anymore warning, Lavi shrieked and jumped up from his seat. "TAKE COVER!!!" he shouted at the top of his lungs as he raced to reach the safety of another table.

And that's when Allen and Kanda's "disagreement" became a fight-to-the-death.

But this fic's not about watching two bishounens fight to the death; it's about a crazy girl with a smart-mouthed flying creampuff and an omnipowerful Mac. Therefore, let's use the magic of fictional writing to turn back the clock to before Allen and Kanda went homicidal, and refocus on the other end of everyone's favorite cafeteria table.

Here, we find the female foursome having a deep, stimulating conversation.

"For the last time, Road, I am not wasting the girls' only day of immunity on locking Allen, Tyki, Lavi, and Kanda in a small room with a hidden camera and waiting for the 'inevitable'," Mel stated resolutely as she stopped typing on the Gilded Pen to have another spoonful of Jerry's famous homemade oatmeal.

"But it would be so entertaining!" Road whined from her spot across the table. "And it's not like it _wouldn't_ happen. Allen's the ultimate uke and Lavi already proposed to the grumpy samurai Tyki swapped saliva with. Not to mention the absolute bizarreness of Kanda's recently unearthed diary."

"This has nothing to do with everyone's sexual orientation. No one, not even Lavi, would be bold enough to do _anything_ worth watching if _I_ was the one that locked them in a room," Mel countered.

"Well, why don't you just make them drunk?" Road suggested, taking a huge bite of her pancakes. "Then you wouldn't have to worry about their better judgment getting in the way."

"Then I would be mauled by rabid Lavi, Kanda, Allen, and Tyki fangirls for damaging the livers of their obsessions."

"But wouldn't all the Yullen, Laven, TykixAllen, LavixKanda, TykixLavi, and TykixKanda fangirls protect you from the onslaught while praising you as their hero?"

Caught off guard, the teen stopped eating and put her hand to her chin, deep in thought. After half a minute, she shuddered and shook her head, mumbling something about "too many yaoi fangirls".

"Well then, why don't we have the boys do something less…questionable," Lenalee suggested.

"We could have them play a giant game of twister!" Road squealed.

"Why?" Miranda asked confusedly.

"Think of all the awkward positions the guys could get themselves into!" she replied ecstatically.

The other three girls sweatdropped at the Noah's determination to have some sort of yaoi worked into the day's schedule.

"_The boys are lucky I'm one of the few DGM fangirls that isn't yaoi crazed," _Mel said to herself. _"Although I do like that twister idea. Maybe I can use that in conjunction with something else. Karaoke might work if-"_

"TAKE COVER!!!"

Startled by the sudden shout, Mel snapped out of her plotting to witness Lavi diving under a table, accompanied by two sets of battle cries, the snapping of some very unfortunate tables and chairs, and the terrified screams of several finders and scientists as they sought to get away from the soon-to-be ground zero.

"What's going on?!" Lenalee asked as dozens of people ran past her towards the entrance.

As if on cue, Johnny poked his head out of the retreating mass. "Kanda-san and Allen-san have snapped!" he shouted in an attempt to be heard over the cacophony of the fight.

Miranda and Lenalee's eyes instantly widened in distress while Mel and Road's sparkled in excitement. "I have to see this!" the latter pair shouted as they jumped up from their seats.

"Mel, Road, this is serious! Stop fooling around!" Lenalee scolded.

"Omg, you're so right Lenalee! What was I thinking?" Mel chided herself. "How selfish of me to just watch it. I should get this on video and post it on youtube for the enjoyment of the rest of the world!"

Lenalee could feel the sweat gathering at her temple as Mel magically made a pink camera appear in her hand.

"Now, where are the bishies?" the camera-woman wannabe asked.

As if to answer her question, a very rapidly moving samurai came shooting past her and crashed into their table, effectively splitting it in two. Concerned as ever, Miranda and Lenalee immediately rushed over to make sure their comrade was okay only to have him jump up a second later, yell "MOYASHI!!!", and race off to try to kill the person that had sent him flying.

"Honestly, those two can be so dense at times!" Lenalee complained as she watched the two continue to destroy what still remained of the cafeteria.

"Mel, wanna bet on who's going to win?" asked Road while following the action with her eyes. "50 bucks says Allen." After a couple of seconds without a response, Road turned to look at Mel. "Mel, what's wrong?"

Strangely, the fangirl wasn't watching the bishie fight in front of her; she was looking back at the broken table, eyes wide and face pale. In response to Road's question, she just lifted her hand and pointed weakly at the object that had her attention.

Following her finger, Road caught sight of the Gilded Pen that had been on the table at the time of the attack. And the oatmeal that had splattered onto its keyboard, causing sparks to fly.

The Noah's eyes immediately grew to thrice their normal size. "OH SHI-"

A giant explosion of bright light filled the entire cafeteria, engulfing all the exorcists and Noahs in the room (all of the scientists and finders were gone by now).

5 seconds later, Komui, Reever, and Lys came bursting through the door. "What on Earth is going on in-" Reever abruptly stopped shouting and fell into silence along with his two associates as they looked at the sight in front of them.

Kanda, Tyki, Lavi, Allen, Mel, Miranda, Lenalee, Road, Marie, and Krory were all sitting on the floor, crying their eyes out and throwing temper tantrums, apparently unaware of the fact that they were now less than 3 feet tall.

After a couple of moments spent staring, Lys concisely summed up everyone's thought processes: "…this…might be a problem…"

* * *

"So, what do you think, Johnny?"

Said scientist looked up from his copy of _Your Baby's Journey: Developmental Steps from Birth to Kindergarten_ to face the pink golem. "Well, Lys, based on this book I'd say that Tyki, Miranda-san, Krory-san, and Marie-san are all 4 years old. I'm pretty sure Lavi and Kanda-san are both 3. Lenalee-chan seems to be a little older than 2. And Road, Allen-kun, and Mel-chan are all definitely 1, give or take a couple of month."

"That sounds about right…" Lys muttered to herself. Turning around, she cleared her throat and in her most authoritative voice, said, "Okay, let' get down to business. Reever, stop banging your head against the wall to get out of dealing with this; Lavi may have gotten away with only a slight concussion, but you might not be so lucky. And Komui, will you please stop hugging Lenalee?"

Reever sighed and stopped with his repetitive head smashing as per Lys' request, but Komui was more obstinate. "But my precious Lenalee!" he whined while squeezing said girl tighter.

"Calm down. She's perfectly safe in here," Reever said while gesturing towards the rest of the library, which the Science Department had hastily repurposed into a makeshift nursery after they learned of what transpired in the cafeteria.

Komui looked up at the man with tear filled eyes. "But…but…" he sobbed.

Lys groaned at the man's antics. "Look, if you want your precious 16 year old Lenalee back, suck it up and help us fix the Gilded Pen," she said sternly. "It's the only way to fix this whole mess."

"Yeah, stop blubbering and change me back already!" a very irate, very tiny Kanda added from his spot in the library/nursery's corner.

"But Yu, you look so cute!" an equally tiny Lavi exclaimed.

As a very pissed off chibi samurai started chasing a chibi bunny around the room with his sword (why did the Science Department let a 3 year old Kanda keep his sword anyway?), Johnny managed to coax the Supervisor into letting go of a slightly oxygen-deprived Lenalee and leaving the nursery to go work on the Gilded Pen with Reever and Lys. But just as they were about to leave the room…

BANG!

"KOMUI, WHAT THE HELL DID YOU DO TO ME?!!!"

Normally, such an outburst from General Cross Marian, famous for his womanizing ways, love of wine, and fighting ability, would be cause for alarm. However, everyone in the room (including the children) had to bite their tongues to keep from laughing out loud. It was quite a sight, really: the general, standing in the doorway at the staggering height of 40 inches (101.6 cm), his normally well-fitting clothes seeming to engulf him in yards of excess fabric, fuming like a steamed vegetable. Many a fangirl would have fainted from cuteness overload.

Despite the completely non-threatening appearance, though, Cross was still a very pissed off general with two innocences at his disposal, so after struggling through his almost-laughter, Komui responded, "I didn't do anything this time, General Cross. Mel-chan's Gilded Pen was damaged, so-"

"So it was that girl who started that pointless cooking contest." The man interrupted as he strolled in the room. "Where the hell is she? She's not getting away with…" The man trailed off as the now-1 year old Mel came crawling up to him and flashed him a big, toothy grin. After she crawled away again, there was a rather awkward silence before Cross turned his attention back to Komui. "Just tell me when I'll be back to normal."

The Chinese man motioned to Reever to pass him a clipboard that was lying on a nearby table. As he flipped through the pages, he said, "The Gilded Pen sustained quite a bit of damage due to the fight in the cafeteria. Since we're talking about an enchanted item, it will probably take us two days to fix it, maybe a day and a half if we're lucky."

"WHAT?! YOU EXPECT ME TO WALK AROUND LIKE THIS?! FU-" Cross' tirade ended abruptly as a random book collided with his skull and knocked him to the ground. Obviously flustered, he shot back up and yelled, "WHAT THE FU-"

"Shut up, Cross. You're giving me a headache." Everyone turned to see a miniature Klaud Nine standing in the doorway, her arms crossed.

"And you shouldn't curse in front of young children, either, Cross-san. They're very impressionable at this age," Tiedoll added as he appeared in the same doorway with General Sokaro next to him. Needless to say, they too were also smaller than usual.

While Cross mumbled to himself about his "collegues", Reever whispered to Komui, "We better get to work on the laptop now."

"Right," Komui agreed. "Generals, would you mind staying in the library for now? It'll be easier for us if we know where you are."

"What, you want us to stay in the freaking nursery?! Hell no!" Cross replied indignantly. "I'm going to get myself a drink."

"Yeah, forget this. Maybe I can find some akuma nearby," Sokaro added.

Just as the two started to walk out of the library, Klaud grabbed them by the back of their collars. Despite the generals all appearing to be around 5 years old, Klaud was noticeably taller than colleagues, so she was easily able to lift the two men from the ground. "You two aren't going anywhere until Komui fixes this mess," she stated with a threatening edge to her voice that made even Cross and Sokaro fear for their safety. Seeing that the boys would not be struggling anytime soon, the general turned around and walked back into the library, carrying the two like sacks of potatoes, Tiedoll trailing close behind. "Don't worry, I'll handle these idiots. You just focus on working," Klaud told the scientists over her shoulder.

Once she was out of earshot, Lys asked Komui, "Are we seriously going to let a 5 year old be in charge of toddlers?"

"Sure!" Komui exclaimed. "What could possibly go wrong?"

"About a million and one things, since you just invoked the dreaded 'what else' cliché," Reever deadpanned.

"You two worry too much," Komui dismissed. "Now, let's go! The sooner we can get my Lenalee back to normal, the sooner she can start making me her delicious coffee again!"

The golem and Australian man sighed as the Supervisor ran out the room in his classic hyper way. _"This is going to be a __long__ two days…"

* * *

_

TO BE CONTINUED

* * *

Mel: Before anyone says anything, this was _not_ a convoluted attempt to avoid giving the girls the immunity promised in Chapter 7. And I did _not_ turn myself into a baby on purpose so I wouldn't have to babysit 13 super-powered munchkins. Honest!

DGM Cast + Lys: *sarcastically* Riiiiiiight…

Mel: *ignores peanut gallery* And so this concludes yet another chapter. Sorry if it kinda sucked. School tends to drain me of all my creative juices, so most of the stuff I end up writing is really bad. .

And now, I'm going to do a bit of shameless advertising. =3  
As some of you may remember from Chapter 7 (the one where everyone was cooking, and Lavi and Allen wore dresses), I have now officially become a Beta. I am now pleased to announce that in the past month, I have gotten not one, not two, but three Beta requests! ^o^  
So everyone should go and read catwwomen47's fic, _Welcome Home Allen_ (please note that my Beta-ing picks up in Chapter 3, not 2) and, after I've been given the next draft of the second chapter, _kanda is a demon_ by crazy10118 (Beta-ing picks up in Chapter 2 for this one). My third Beta job, Daruku Janubu, has yet to tell me which story I'll be editing, so I'll amend this advertisement later.

And remember: no matter what, Chapter 11 will be posted, but it may be posted more quickly if I know that people want to and are waiting read it. So please, please, please review! ^-^


	12. Day 6: Bring on the Pantene and Pampers!

Kanda: Where the hell is that lazy-ass authoress of ours?! We've been waiting in this goddamned place for 2 FREAKING MONTHS!!!

Lys: Honestly, Kanda, calm down.

Allen: Yeah, since when did you actually _want_ this fic to continue?

Kanda: …

*Mel comes running in*

Mel: I am **SO** sorry, guys! It was the homework! I swear!!!

Kanda: Stop wasting time apologizing and finish the damn Author's Note already!

Mel: *sticks tongue out* Whatever, quick thanks to everyone that reviewed/fav'd/alerted the last chap. That's kate4394, dragonheart3, crazy10118, Candyone11, Zack1996, Yuki949, Shoten Shinzui, Zenigami, Ominias, Hope You Know Me (yes, I do recognize you ^_~ ), Karoomy-chan, Snowy Cherry-san, LoLi-LoLa-xD, and kana-alabus. I hope you all weren't driven away by my 2-month writing coma! T_T

Disclaimer: No, I don't own DGM, so quit reminding me! TT_TT

Now, please enjoy this very overdue chapter. And WARNING: this chapter contains some censored f-bombs and some un-censored synonyms for "feces." You have been warned.

* * *

"Can't *pant* breathe *pant* not *pant* gonna *pant* make it," Johnny gasped. His lungs, his legs, _everything_ felt like it was on fire as he raced through the hallways of the Order. But he couldn't give up. He _had_ to make it back to the library _now_ or else…

"Come on, Johnny! You can do it! Don't focus on how hard it is to breathe or how far you still have to run or how you'll most likely be too late, no matter how hard you try or-"

Crashing sounds could be heard through the golem flying by Johnny's head as ownership of the microphone violently changed hands. "Ignore Lavi, Johnny. He's being an idiot." The calm, cold voice of General Klaud was a stark contrast to the hyper chattering that had preceded it. "Just focus on the task at hand."

Johnny weakly nodded his head, fatigue preventing him from realizing that Klaud couldn't see his nod through the golem. After what seemed like an hour (but was really only about 15 seconds), the library door came into view. With renewed conviction, the boy picked up speed and used the last of his strength to ram his way through the door (which, truth be told, was already ajar, so it really wasn't that much of an accomplishment).

14 pairs of giant chibi eyes stared up at the wheezing scientist clutching a huge bright blue box to his chest. "I got the *pant* the *pant* the…"

"Yes, yes, you got it. Good job. Now stop blabbering and hand it over," a very irritated Tyki interrupted, snatching the box away from the youth. Being relieved of his package, Johnny collapsed face up on the floor, chest rising and sinking in quick succession.

"Ok people, we've got a lot to do, and not a lot of time to do it in," General Klaud announced to the gathering of toddlers. "Miranda and Tyki, take care of Road. Cross and Kanda, handle Allen. I'll tackle Mel. Any questions?"

"Yeah, I have one."

"What is it, Cross?"

"Why the hell do I have to take care of my idiot apprentice with Little Miss Femininity?"

"What the f*** did you just call me?!"

Before any snappy rebuttals could be given, both males were lifted up by their collars to find themselves face-to-face with a very large, snarling, innocence monkey. "Is there a problem, you two?" Klaud asked in a voice that promised much pain to those who answered incorrectly.

Since neither exorcist wished to meet his maker in the next 5 seconds, Cross and Kanda kept their mouths shut. Satisfied with their silence, Klaud motioned for Lau Shimin to release its grip. "Well then, you better get started," the general smirked as she handed Cross one of the plastic-wrapped packages from the box.

"Damn it," Cross mumbled under his breath as he watched the woman and her now-shrunken monkey head over towards the library's biography section. Grunting, he turned to face Kanda, who didn't look much happier. "Hey, go get my idiot apprentice so we can get this over with," he commanded.

Normally, Kanda would have skewered anyone who had the nerve to talk to him in such a manner, but given the fact that he would be fighting in a 3 year old's body against a general, he momentarily swallowed his pride and carried/dragged the giggling mini-moyashi to a nearby table. "Oi, someone make themselves useful and get me a sheet," Kanda shouted out.

A vein pulsed in his forehead as a bright pink cloth with yellow rubber duckies was brought up to his face, Lavi cooing, "Here you go, Yu-chan~~" into his ear.

"_Calm down, Kanda. Job first, decapitating rabbits later,"_ Kanda thought with a grimace as he snatched the blanket from his "assistant" and spread it on the table. As he placed Allen on the soft surface, Cross came over with the package he got from Klaud.

"Here you go, kid. Knock yourself out," the general said dismissively as he pressed the strange wad into Kanda's arms.

"Hell no! He's your apprentice. You do it!" He practically threw the offending object at Cross.

"Is that anyway to talk to your superiors?"

"Screw that! There is no f***ing way I'm doing _that_!!"

Lavi walked up to his indignant friend and leaned an amicable elbow on his shoulder. "Come on, Yu. You're making it sound like the end of the world. It's just a diaper," he said.

"I am _not_ touching the damn moyashi's a**!" Kanda yelled into Lavi's face.

"H-hey, g-guys," Krory tried to interrupt, but his naturally quiet voice went unnoticed by the three males.

"Really, Kanda? And after reading your diary, I could've sworn you'd jump at the opportunity to take off my apprentice's pants," Cross taunted with a huge smirk on his face.

Being taken by surprise, Kanda's face broke out in a crimson red blush, sending Lavi to the floor in hysterics. "Oh my god, Yu-chan's gay for Allen! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!"

"Guys, I really think you should see…"

"BAKA USAGI, I'M GOING TO SKIN YOU ALIVE AND USE YOUR PELT AS A RUG!!!!!!" Kanda literally pounced at the red-head and proceeded to chase him around the greater part of the library in a blind rage. The only reason Lavi lived to see another day was because a) Kanda had been so enraged, he had neglected to get Mugen from its spot in the library's sci-fi section, b) at 3 years old, Lavi's legs were marginally longer than Kanda's, and c)…

"GUYS!"

"WHAT?!" Kanda yelled at Krory, who immediately shrunk back from the killer aura emanating from the toddler.

"L-l-look…" Krory stuttered as he pointed towards the table. Everyone turned around to look at the table, and their faces instantly drained of all color.

For you see, in his head, Allen was still a 15 year-old exorcist, but physically, he was only 1. And 1 year olds are not known for their self-control. So while Cross was waiting for Kanda to put a diaper on him and Kanda was trying to kill Lavi, Allen had a bit of an…accident. And this accident was…not a good one.

"Oh shit," Cross and Kanda cursed simultaneously.

Suddenly, an aura even darker than Kanda's could be felt in the room, causing all four men to sweat nervously. No one dared turn around as Klaud commanded through gritted teeth, "Clean. It. Up. _Now."_

One thing was clearly obvious to all those within earshot: there was no way the general and the samurai were ever going to live this down.

* * *

ONE "THOUROUGH" CLEANING LATER

* * *

"Look at the bright side, Yu. We've finally solved the mystery of where all Allen's food goes!"

"If you ever plan on having children, stop using my first name and never. Mention. This. Ever. Again."

For once, Lavi took the hint and shut his trap. He had never seen Kanda so…enraged? No, that wasn't the right word. Maybe irritated? No, in all his years of annoying Kanda, the exorcist had never threatened to take away Lavi's manhood. After much consideration, Lavi decided on a mix of disgust, embarrassment, and unadulterated anger.

The junior bookman didn't like seeing his friend so upset. It was unnerving. So he decided to cheer him up.

"Hey, Yu-chan! Let's braid your hair!"

Needless to say, the red-head chose the wrong method, and this time, Kanda remembered to grab Mugen before he started attacking.

"Eeeek! Help! I'm too young to die!" Lavi yelled in his high-pitched toddler voice as he dove out of the way of Kanda's strikes. If he wasn't so scared, he would have marveled at the fact that such a tiny person could wield such a heavy sword.

Before Kanda could take another whack at the rabbit, he felt a tug on his shirt. He turned violently, ready to stab whoever had dared distract his rage only to stop seconds before hitting Lenalee.

Seemingly oblivious to the near hit, the girl stared up at Kanda with the biggest sparkly eyes the boy had ever seen. It was quite disconcerting, and a tiny sweatdrop could be seen on the boy's temple.

"Can I bwaid Kanda-onii-chan's hair too, pwetty pwease?" Lenalee asked with the cuteness only 2 year olds can achieve.

Since he didn't detest the girl like he did the rabbit, he decided to be "nice" and turn her down with a simple yet curt "no."

To his surprise, the toddler's bright eyes immediately filled with tears, and her lip quivered as she tried to keep her sniffling under control. "Yu-chan, don't be so mean!" Lavi chastised. "Can't you be nice for once? For Lenalee?"

"No," the boy repeated. This time, the girl's self-control failed, and the tears came streaming out of her eyes like water from behind a dam. Her pathetic wailing and heartbreaking face almost made Kanda feel guilty enough to reconsider.

That was when he felt the tip of a very large drill on the nape of his neck.

"Ne, Kanda-kun, why is my precious Lenalee crying?~ Were you being mean to her?~" Komui sang out dangerously.

"_Crap, the sister-complex. Just what I need. And how the hell did he even hear her crying?! He was supposed to be 3 floors beneath us!" _Kanda mentally cursed. "She wanted to braid my hair, and I said no," he answered the Supervisor as calmly as his annoyance would allow.

"Well, why did you say no? That sounds like a lovely idea!" The Chinese man exclaimed, causing both Lenalee and Lavi's faces to light up in excitement.

"_You have GOT to be kidding me."_ "It's not a lovely idea, it's a stupid one," Kanda scoffed. Disregarding the drill that was still pointed at him, he moved to walk away from his idiot boss only to nearly walk into the same drill, now pointed at his nose.

"_What the hell? Since when was he that fast?!"_ The exorcist eyed the drill contemptuously, refusing to let even the slightest bit of fear enter his gaze.

Seeing that physically threatening the boy with oversized machinery wasn't going to work, Komui flashed him an extremely creepy, lopsided smile. "You will play with my precious Lenalee, and you will enjoy it, or you will be testing out my new Komurins for the next 6 months. _Without_ Mugen. Understand?"

"_F***, he got me,"_ the toddler thought. After muttering some choice English and Japanese curses under his breath, Kanda muttered, "Fine," and sat down where he stood, arms crossed in frustration.

Komui's evil aura quickly evaporated into rainbows and sunshine. "Good! Now that that's settled, I'm off to finish the Pen repairs. Have fun you three!~" And the supervisor skipped out as if he didn't have a care in the world.

Heaving a defeated sigh, Kanda slowly rose to his feet and turned back towards the two whiny toddlers. But instead of being greeted with an empty section of floor, the exorcist found himself standing in front of a miniature pink salon that the baka usagi had apparently set up in the span of 30 seconds. It was totally self-contained, with its own sink, shampoo and conditioner dispensers, hair dryer, curling iron, and hair straightener, and the whole thing was laid out as if it had been designed by toddlers for toddlers. Standing beside the special client's chair were a madly giggling Lenalee and a beaming Lavi. "So Yu-chan, are you ready for your appointment?" the rabbit asked genially, comb and brush in hand.

On second thought, Kanda should have chosen the Komurins. 6 months wasn't _that_ bad.

* * *

Kanda: What the f***?!?! Damnit, Mel!!! *points Mugen at Mel's forehead*

Mel: Ah, don't kill me!!! If you do, I'll never be able to write an ending, and you'll be stuck as a 3 year old forever!

*Kanda grumbles incoherently and resheathes Mugen*

Mel: Phew! Close call. Again, sorry about the horrible lack of updates. That was SO not cool of me. You have my sincerest apologies. *bows deeply*  
This chapter was originally going to be twice as long, but at the rate I've been writing, it wouldn't have been uploaded until Christmas, so I made the executive decision to split it. After all, it wouldn't have been right to leave you guys hanging for so long. Hope you all liked it, because after writing for three days straight, it still sounds really sucky to me. -_-  
If you'd be so kind as to leave a review and tell me that you're still reading this and that you don't hate my guts for not updating, I would be very thankful.  
To all my fellow Americans out there, Happy Late Thanksgiving! :D


	13. Day 6: OMG, THE HAIR! :O

I fail at life. And timeliness. And record keeping since I deleted the list of people I wanted to thank for reviewing/fav'ing last chapter. Man, do I suck.

I have no decent excuse for falling off the face of the planet. My sincerest apologies. I hope I didn't alienate you guys. ;_;

* * *

"_So Yu-chan, are you ready for your appointment?" the rabbit asked genially, comb and brush in hand._

_On second thought, Kanda should have chosen the Komurins. 6 months wasn't_that_bad._

* * *

_MEANWHILE, IN THE QUIET CONFINES OF THE SCIENCE DEPARTMENT…_

* * *

**BOOM!**

The sudden noise was accompanied by a shockwave so great that poor, unsuspecting Reever fell flat on his bum, bringing all the heavy, steel tools he had been carrying down with him.

"Oomph!" the man blurted out as his cargo proceeded to knock the breath out of his chest as gravity commanded.

"Crap! Reever, are you okay?" Lys fluttered worriedly over the man's head, cursing her luck that she couldn't assist the man in any way. Damn, why couldn't this form come with hands? "Komui, what the hell was that?! Are your trying to kill us?!" the peeved golem snapped at the source of the explosion.

"I was merely trying to replicate the compound used in the Golden Pen's battery," Komui said in an uncharacteristically intellectual tone. The fact that his hat had also been blown off, his hair straitened into some gravity defying cousin of the Mohawk, and his face and glasses covered in black ash from the explosion only added the absurdity of the situation.

Lys' anger temporarily fizzled out as she sweatdropped. "You realize that there was nothing wrong with the battery in the first place, right?"

"Yeah, but it's just so efficient!" Komui exclaimed, his manner quickly reverting back to normal (or as normal as the sister-complex/mad-scientist/chief-of-super-powered-priests could ever be). "I'll never get the chance to study such advanced technology again! You can't possibly expect me not to try and copy it, can you?" he asked in the indignant voice of a spoiled child.

"Komui! We are trying to get everyone back to normal here! Focus!!!" Lys scolded. "And what in God's name is that smell?!" she added, blocking out her non-existent nose with her fluffy tail. She was referring to the cross between a horribly busy perfume department and a guys' locker-room in the middle of August.

Reever, who finally came back to his senses and dug his way out of his tool mound, sniffed the air uncertainly. "You know, that smells kind of familiar…" the man commented.

The Chinese man removed his blackened glasses and started cleaning them on his lab coat. "It should," he commented brightly. "I used a sweet-smelling bottle I found in your room. I think it was called 'Acqua Di Gio' or something like that."

"What?!" In a rare bout of rage, Reever charged his boss and grabbed him by the collar. "You jerk! That bottle cost 95 dollars!!!"

Lys, rather than worry for the chief's safety, quirked an eyebrow. "You actually spent that much money on _perfume_?" she asked, adding extra emphasis to the last word.

Abruptly, the Australian man dropped Komui and shook his head violently. "No! It was a gift! And it's not perfume! It's cologne!" he shouted indignantly, his face flushed with embarrassment.

"Rrriiiiiiiight," Komui and Lys responded simultaneously, obviously not believing him.

"But seriously," Komui said, switching back to his serious demeanor. "This laptop is an incredibly intricate and marvelous feat of engineering." His voice had the faintest tinge of awe as he carefully lifted the magical item from its resting place on a nearby table. "So much so that I'm afraid I don't have the expertise to properly repair it."

"Then what are we supposed to do?" Reever asked, his perfume, *cough*, _cologne_ apparently forgotten.

Komui bowed his head in silent defeat as if to say "_I don't know._" His two companions also lowered their gazes, the hopelessness of the situation feeling like a 10 ton weight on their shoulders.

Silence pervaded the lab for what seemed like an eternity until Lys broke it. With a string of curses.

"Wha?" Reever and Komui both looked in shock at the profanity spouting woman. "Whoa, Lys, where did that come from?" the blond asked. He was used to the finders' "sailor talk" and all, but even by their standards, she was saying some vulgar stuff. Thank goodness all the kids were still in the library.

Reluctantly, Lys heaved a heavy sigh, burying her brief flash of fury in the deepest reaches of her mind. "Sorry about that. It's just…I thought of a way to get the Gilded Pen repaired," she said in a voice just short of a whisper.

"Really? That's great news!" Reever cheered. However, his enthusiasm wasn't shared by the golem. On the contrary, the air around her seemed to experience a drop in temperature and light, and the two men could've sworn they saw an actual storm cloud pelting the pink creature with torrential rains.

Confused, Komui cleared his throat to get Lys' attention. "Uh, is there something…wrong…?"

Again, she sighed, this time in resignation. "Not really. It's just that to get the Pen fixed, we'll have to go visit…" She paused for breath, and spat out her next words as if they were bitter poison: "my boss."

Both men blinked, not comprehending the significance of this new information. What was so bad about Lys' boss?

One could practically hear the turning of gears as the two scientists' brains worked to come up with an explanation. (**A/N:** For all those that don't remember, the next section is taken directly from Chapter 2. Not that I expect you to remember stuff I wrote months ago. ^^; ) Lys was sworn guardian of the Gilded Pen and its designated owner (aka Mel-chan). She took the form of a pink flying fuzzball (not that anyone in the Black Order would say that to her face); she had scared them all silly when she shouted in an impossibly loud, omnipotent voice that she would have them all dragged down to hell by their pinkie toes and that she was the right hand servant of…

Having reached the same conclusion at the same time, both men's faces drained of color. Reever grabbed onto the table behind him for support; Komui just collapsed into the nearest chair, shakily running a hand through his still-ash-filled hair.

Reever recovered the use of his voice first. "Are you saying that we have to visit…God? As in, _the_ God? The creator of the universe and master of all life, _that_ God?"

"Yes, _that_ God." Lys sneered. "What part of the English language do you not understand?"

An indignant grunt escaped Reever. "Well, Miss Congeniality, how are we supposed to meet Him anyway? It's not like we can walk right up to the pearly gates of Heaven and knock," he quipped.

"Hello, I'm a guardian angel? I can make interdimensional portals that lead to any world, including God's Golden Kingdom," she said nonchalantly, as if that was the most obvious thing in the world.

Unfortunately for Reever's ego, he couldn't come up with a witty comeback, so he was forced to give the simple response of "oh."

A smirk flitted across the golem's face at her verbal victory before she returned to the crisis at hand. Making eye-contact with Komui (who had since recovered from his own shock), she said deliberately, "However, I'm not exactly supposed to be giving mortals special-access tours of the place."

"Right. Reever, you stay here and go help Johnny with the kids," Komui ordered.

"What?! Why me?! Why can't you stay?!" Reever exclaimed.

"Because I'm the great Supervisor! I can't send an underling in my place to meet _God_! Where are your manners, Reever?" The argument Komui made might have been taken seriously if he hadn't delivered it in his "paperwork-evasion" voice.

Reever immediately pointed an accusing finger at the Chinese chief. "Bastard! You just want to avoid taking care of the exorcists!"

"Mm-hmm, that's nice," he replied, clearly not paying attention to his friend's accusations. "Lys, shall we get going then?"

Nodding her assent, she flew over to a less crowded area of the room and floated about 4 feet from the ground. Closing her eyes, she spread her wings out to their full length, chanting some strange mantra in an unfamiliar language. Her pink wings glowed with a brilliant white light, forcing her audience to shield their eyes. When they finally recovered their vision, an oval of the same white light, approximately 7 feet high, stood where Lys had just been. The golem herself flew up from behind her portal. "Follow me," she said curtly as she quickly glided into the white expanse, disappearing from sight.

"Right!" Komui exclaimed happily as he skipped up to the portal. "We'll be back soon! Take good care of my precious Lenalee while I'm gone!" he called back over his shoulder to Reever as he walked in.

Desperately, the Australian man screamed, "WAIT!" but he was too late. The portal instantly shrunk and disintegrated before his eyes. Feeling a vein throbbing on his temple, Reever did the only thing he could: he turned on his heel and stalked off to "babysitting duty" while cursing his good-for-nothing boss under his breath.

* * *

"Okay, just one more hair tie and…MY MASTERPIECE IS COMPLETE!" Lavi clapped his hands in celebration. "Damn, am I good or what?" he asked little Lenalee.

Gasping in awe, the little girl pointed and said, "Kanda-nii-chan looks so pwetty!"

"I know, right?" Lavi exclaimed happily. "Definitely my best work ever. I should take a picture-"

"LIKE HELL YOU WILL!!!" In the blink of an eye, cold steel was once again pressed to the red-head's neck. "Take a picture of this and you'll be losing another eye," Kanda seethed from his salon seat.

Unsurprisingly, Lavi was unperturbed. "Oh, I get it! If you poke out both my eyes, I won't be able to look at the picture anyway! Yu-chan is so smart!" the boy complimented brightly.

"Baka usagi, stop using my name and give me a mirror!"

"Oh, I completely forgot!" Lavi clapped his hands on the sides of his face in false shock. Turning to face his co-stylist, he leaned down and asked, "Lenalee-chan, go get a mirror so Yu-chan can see how pretty he is~"

"Okay!" the girl replied. With the unsteady waddle of a toddler, she walked over to the mini-salon Lavi had set up and started rifling through one of the lower drawers. Within moments, she shouted "Found it!" with glee and held it out to her still-fuming Japanese friend.

Trying hard not to take his anger out on the innocent girl in front of him, he grabbed the mirror and brought it up to his face.

He was expecting something completely mortifying like a Mohawk or a mullet. What he saw was worse.

The whole look registered in the exorcist's mind in phases. The first things he noticed were the braids. There were _dozens_ of tiny, delicate French braids interspersed throughout the rest of his still-straight jet black hair. Most of the braids were accompanied by various glass beads. The ranged from pea-size to marble-size and from neon yellow to a girly royal purple. A baby pink scrunchie gathered the majority of his hair into a high ponytail, the braids sticking out and curling around his face. The look was completed with an iridescent headband settled on the crown of his head, the color matching that of the scrunchie.

Even in his worst nightmares, he had never imagined something so…so…_disturbing_.

(**A/N:** I didn't actually come up with the hairstyle. It belongs to Rikku from Final Fantasy X-2. Google her picture, make the hair longer and dye it black, and you'll know why Kanda's freaking out. XD )

And finally, he heard it. The giggling.

All other thoughts ceased as he abruptly swiveled his salon chair to face the source of the aggravating sound. His eyes took in the six people standing there. Miranda, and Krory had immediately noticed the new attention on themselves. Hands were clamped over their mouths, eyes wide in sheer horror, but even their best efforts couldn't halt the silent laughter shaking their frames. Their faces were beat red from the pressure of being silent. Tyki was much less ashamed and scared than the exorcists, but he was trying to conceal his grin at the samurai's misfortune. He wasn't stupid; he could sense the murderous aura gathering.

The other three children didn't catch on where their elders had. Allen, Road, and Mel were all lying on the floor, laughing madly and rolling around on the library carpet. Allen was even crying, his laughter overriding all common sense.

Kanda just stared. He didn't hear Lavi's nervous stuttering as he attempted to diffuse the quickly deteriorating situation. He didn't feel Lenalee tugging at his sleeve in worry.

What he did hear was Allen gathering enough breath to cry out, "Yu-onee-chan look ten time better!"

After that, all the Japanese boy saw was red.

* * *

F***!!! DAMNIT ALL, WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH ME?!?! !!!!!! DX TT_TT

*sigh* Ok, I'm calm now.

Yeah, this chapter was supposed to be longer, but since I haven't updated in _3 freaking months_, all I could think about was getting _something_ up before next week. Blame my muse; she's recently gotten me addicted to another manga and has steadfastly refused to help with anything DGM-related.

Of course, my own lazy tendencies didn't help much either. GOMENASAI!!! D'X

Since I lost most of your names (sorry ;_; ), I'm just gonna give a general love-hug to all the reviewers/fav'ers/alerters from the last chapter. Please don't hate me for taking so long. X_x


	14. Day 6: Angels and Demons

Lavi: *knocks on door* Mel-chan, you in there? You haven't come out of your room for 3 months now. You haven't even read any stories for three weeks! Are you okay?

Mel: *quiet chanting and keyboard smashing*

Lavi: Er...okay...could you repeat that...?

Mel: *shouts* WORK EQUALS FORCE TIMES DISTANCE! 5 CHOOSE 2 EQUALS 5 FACTORIAL DIVIDED BY 2 FACTORIAL TIMES 3 FACTORIAL! KING LOUIS THE SIXTEENTH OF FRANCE WAS EXECUTED ON JANUARY 21, 1793! *goes back to chanting*

Lavi:...............

Lenalee: I think she's finally lost her mind...

Lavi: Yeah...but what happens to us now...?

*papers appear from under door*

Lenalee: What's this? *picks up and reads* Lavi, it's the next chapter!

Lavi: Really? Finally! This has been fun and all, but I'm getting kinda bored of being a 3 year old.

Lenalee: There's an A/N on it too.

I can never apologize enough to you guys for my horrendous updating schedule. You deserve better than this, especially by alerters and reviewers. And to all the people out there whose stories _I'm _following, sorry for being such a flake. I'm falling asleep as I'm typing this, but I refuse to postpone this update any longer! It has not been proofread, so forgive any glaring mistakes you may see. The ending was written two months after the beginning, so...yeah...also, ignore the weird A/Ns...

Remember, I DON'T OWN DGM! (Thank god for that; I think I would've been mauled by random fangirls by now for my seasonal updates. X_x)

I hope you enjoy this chapter! *bows*

* * *

_"We'll be back soon! Take good care of my precious Lenalee while I'm gone!" he called back over his shoulder to Reever as he walked in._

_Desperately, the Australian man screamed, "WAIT!" but he was too late. The portal instantly shrunk and disintegrated before his eyes. Feeling a vein throbbing on his temple, Reever did the only thing he could: he turned on his heel and stalked off to "babysitting duty" while cursing his good-for-nothing boss under his breath._

_

* * *

_

"Komui? Ko~mu~i? Goddamnit Komui, wake up! This isn't funny!"

Clearly irritated, Lys waved her hand a centimeter from the man's nose to get his attention. To her surprise and disappointment, the usually spastic Chief didn't even blink.

She groaned as she was forced to switch to Plan L. "Oi, Lenalee's getting married to Tyki and is already pregnant with quadruplets." Having already seen Reever employ Plan L twice, she immediately stepped back and clamped her hands over her ears…

…only to find that Komui again didn't move a muscle.

Lys finally allowed herself to feel something akin to worry. Even if he was pulling her leg, the sister-complex never failed to react to the marriage maneuver.

Perhaps he was frozen in shock? But why? Sure, they had just stepped through an interdimensional portal and arrived at the entrance to heaven, but she really didn't see what the big deal was. It wasn't like all those weird stories mortals made up to pass the time. There weren't any gates or angelic choirs. The entrance was simply a round lobby with white marble floors, the kind one might expect at a fortune 500 company. The walls were nothing more than floor-to-ceiling windows with the exception of the back of the room, where a blond receptionist sat behind an ebony desk, filing her nails. The door behind her led deeper into the compound.

All in all, there was nothing to gawk at.

…except for the endless sea of clouds outside the windows.

…and the receptionist's two pure white wings.

…and the fact that upon entering the lobby, Lys instantly transformed from a pink puffball to a delicate young woman, height 5'2", with softly curling golden hair reaching down past her shoulders and 6 light lavender, feathered wings replacing her golem wings.

…maybe she should have warned him about this _before_ they got here.

Oh well, too late now.

Without a moment's hesitation, Lys smacked Komui across the face, sending the unsuspecting man crashing into the desk across the room.

"Ow, that hurt~!" he whined as he reached up to rub his poor head and straighten out his glasses. "Lys, what'd you do that for?"

"For being an idiot," she deadpanned. The woman walked over purposefully, white slippers clinking against the floor with each step. "You were staring off into space for 5 whole minutes. How else am I supposed to wake you up?"

"I don't know, something that didn't involve throwing me across the room?" Komui suggested.

"Too much trouble," Lys dismissed.

Pouting, the Chinese man stood up and dusted off his uniform. "Well, you can't really blame me," he said, his usual energy returning to his voice. "This place is amazing! And you-"

"What?" Lys snapped. "You got something to say about the way I look?" The angel's eyes quickly narrowed into slits as her fists clenched around the white silk of her knee length dress. For a moment, it looked like flames danced in the background complete with evil satanic cackling.

Komui immediately put his hands up in surrender. "No no! You look great! You always look great! Heh heh…" he nervously blurted out.

Clucking her tongue is distaste, Lys decided to spare the man and turned on her heel to face the receptionist, who was _still_ filing her nails.

"Excuse me, could you call the Boss and tell Him I have urgent business to discuss? My name's Lys," the blonde said in her most professional tone.

Without even looking up, the secretary ducked behind the desk and pulled out a giant stack of papers. "If you want to talk to the Boss, you'll have to file a formal request. Please fill out all the forms and hand them in. Your request will be processed in six to twelve weeks," she recited tiredly.

"Not more paperwork!" Komui whined.

Ignoring him, Lys tried asking again. "I don't think you understand. This is _urgent_. I'm the archangel in charge of guarding the Gilded Pen, and it is crucial that I see the Boss _right now._"

"Like I haven't heard that one before," the seated angel quipped. "Look, I don't care how _urgent_ your business is. Rules are rules. Now beat it before I call security." She looked at the now fuming Lys, an expression of complete boredom ruling her features. "Besides, how could a shrimp like you be an archangel? You don't look a day over 13," she added with a smirk.

"Why you rotten like bi-" Lys was cut off by a pat on the heavy pat on the shoulder and a husky voice teasing, "Now, now, Lys, calm down. We can't afford to keep replacing staff every time someone guesses your age."

"GAH, I'M SORRY!" Komui was flabbergasted as Lys suddenly turned 180 degrees and bowed her head in embarrassment. The fact that the secretary similarly snapped to attention and bowed at the waist failed to clarify the situation.

The man who had spoken merely chuckled at the woman's response. "That's quite all right, if I had a problem with it, I wouldn't have promoted you to archangel, now would I?" His voice immediately reminded Komui of babbling brooks and gently rolling hills.

While Lys mumbled apologies, the Supervisor took the opportunity to observe their new company. The man was quite tall, probably around 6 and a half feet, and pretty well built with a subtle tan and defined muscles. Wavy espresso brown hair reached to his collarbone, framing hazel brown eyes and a handsome face. To the Chinese man's amusement, the "guest" was dressed in what looked like a white silk bathrobe with flip flops. The guy looked like he was in his early twenties. Despite that, he seemed to have a powerful and confident air around him, like he had knowledge beyond his years.

Feeling Komui's gaze, the mystery man turned to face him. At first he looked confused, but the look quickly melted away into a warm smile that could have melted the polar ice caps. "Hello! You must be Komui Lee," he greeted, grasping the Asian man's hand in his own. "Welcome to my humble abode. Name's Bill. Though you might know me better as God. So, what brings y'all here?"

Komui blinked once.

Twice.

Thrice.

Whatever comes after thrice.

"YOU'RE GOD?"

* * *

Reever was _still_ cursing Komui by the time he finally got to the library entrance. And surprisingly, he hadn't repeated himself the entire trip. "_I should probably take that as a bad sign…"_ he thought to himself.

"_Oh well, here goes nothing."_ Apprehensively, Reever reached out, grabbed the doorknob, turned it…

…and had his face tackled by a pile of white fuzz.

"WAH, REEVAH! KANDA-NEE-CHAN IS TWYING TO HUHRT ME!"

Correction, his face was tackled by a hysterical Allen. Luckily for Reever, Allen was a skinny one year old, so the force of the blow wasn't enough to knock him over completely. As he staggered to keep his balance, he reached up to try and pry the sobbing exorcist off his head. "Allen, what's wro-"

"MOYASHI, STAND STILL SO I CAN SHAVE THAT OLD MAN HAIR OFF!" Reever never had a chance to finish his question as an armed and dangerous Kanda rammed into his chest. Unfortunately, Kanda was substantially bigger than Allen, so the blow sent the three to the ground with a loud thud.

In his dazed state, Reever just barely made out a frantic Johnny shouting something like, "Kanda-san, please put Mugen down!" He did register, however, when a screaming Kanda and Allen were forcibly dragged off of him.

Finally free to sit up, Reever looked around to find that Krory, Marie, and Miranda had done him the favor of separating the toddlers. Sighing, he stood to his full height and took a quick survey of his surroundings.

Miranda was trying to console a still crying Allen while Marie and Krory were struggling to keep Kanda incapacitated without being beheaded. Lavi was standing next to some weird pink salon thing, putting make up on Lenalee and Mel. Tyki was busy trying to avoid Road, who apparently had gotten some supplies from the salon and wanted to "practice" on her "uncle". Sokaro was taking a nap, Cross was mumbling to himself in a corner (weird…), Tiedoll seemed to be sketching the ensuing chaos, and Klaud was…was…

Where was she?

"Finally, someone sent backup."

Oh, she was right behind him.

Reever turned to say hello to the general, but instead of returning the greeting, Klaud just handed him a rather large paper-wrapped package.

"General, what's this?"

"_That_ is how we're going to keep these crazy brats from killing each other," Klaud replied breezily. "Johnny, help Reever put it on."

"R-right! Come on, Reever." Johnny grabbed Reever by the elbow and steered him out of the room.

"Wha? Put what on?" The man looked absolutely lost. After all, _he_ was usually the man with the plan.

"Oh, heh heh, you'll see," Johnny answered as the two of them disappeared into a bathroom.

* * *

_FIFTEEN MINUTES LATER..._

_

* * *

_

Klaud had finally "persuaded" Kanda to give up his goal of shaving Allen's head. With order now restored to the exorcist-noah group, all the kiddies were now sitting in a semi-circle in the middle of the library. According to General Nine, if they waited like good little children, they would get an extra special surprise.

All the babies (and Lavi) were eagerly awaiting the surprise. Tyki, Krory, Miranda, and Marie just didn't feel like making any trouble at the moment. And Kanda, Cross, and Sokaro...they just didn't want to have to be "persuaded" to behave (though Kanda was much calmer anyway after Klaud had undone most of Lavi's "masterpiece").

After waiting around for 10 minutes, they heard some really strange sounds resembling laughter coming from the entrance, the source of which appeared moments later.

It looked like a weird purple dinosaur thing with a bright green stomach. Or maybe it was a hippo. Either way, it had some serious weight problems.

"Hey kids! My name is Barney. Do you want to be friends?" the thing asked in a way-too-enthusiastic voice.

Marie, Tiedoll, Krory, and Miranda simply smiled and waved; they were old enough to recognize Reever, no matter how distorted it sounded through the stuffed head. Cross and Tyki recognized him too. They were having a good time laughing their guts out. Surprisingly, Sokaro seemed completely entranced along with all the smaller kids (Kanda included).

"Fwends?" a wide-eyed Mel asked.

"Yup! We can play all kinds of games if you want!" "Barney" answered.

"But my mommy says I'm not allowed to be fwends with you."

"Why not?"

"She said not to play or go with anyone that wooks like a dinosauwr, gives me candy, or has a red van. And she said if they trwy to make me go with them, I should hit them rweally hard where their zipper is."

At this point, Tyki and Cross were starting to turn an interesting shade of blue.

"That's...very good advice. You have a very smart mommy," the dinosaur awkwardly commended.

"Thank you!" Mel exclaimed happily.

Next to her, Sokaro raised his hand and waved it. "Ooh, ooh, I have a question!"

"What is it, little boy?" "Barney" asked in a sugar-sweet voice.

"Are you a piñata?"

"No, I'm no-"

"So if I hit you, will I get candy?" the general interrtuped. He had this weird look in his eye when he said that too...

Reever tried to correct him again. "I don't have any can-"

"You have candy?" Lavi asked innocently.

"I really don-"

"I want candy!" Road screamed.

"Me too!" Allen shouted.

"Hand over the candy, piñata!" On command, Madness appeared in Sokaro's hand, fully activated in all its super-saw-ness.

And so Reever ran. He ran faster than any man tricked into a Barney suit has ever run before. But Barney is not at all aerodynamic. Reever ran too slow. And now he would have to pay the price...

* * *

_MEANWHILE_

_

* * *

_

"So let me get this straight: you're God (as in "He-who-created-the-Earth-Sun-and-Stars"), this office building is Heaven, these workers are all angels, and all this time we on Earth have been portraying you as a bearded old man with a personal toga-cloaked choir?"

"You're only half right." Bill smiled knowlingly at his unusual guest. "This is actually Pergatory."

Komui stopped dead in his tracks, leaving him right in the middle of a column of cubicles on the way to the backroom. If it had been physically possible, his mouth would've hit the floor.

"This is Pergatory?"

"Yeah, everyone here is human," Bill calmly replied. He walked back to Komui and placed a friendly hand on his shoulder. "There's no better penance for mortal sins than to sift through all the angels' paperwork. Trust me, I've tried."

Rather than be comforted, however, Komui response was just the opposite; his face turned a ghostly white and he looked as if he was about to hyperventilate.

Worried, the young man turned to Lys. "What's wrong? Did I say something bad?"

Lys rolled her eyes and started dragging the Chinese man along the hallway. "He's got issues with paperwork," she answered.

"Ahh." The boss man resumed leading the duo to the back of the building where a rather nondescript door stood with a gold placard. Imbedded in said placard was the name "William Shein, SB".

"_What's 'SB' stand for?"_

"Stands for 'Supreme Being.'"

"...YOU CAN READ MY MIND?"

"Of course I can. I'm God, remember?" Bill chuckled at Komui's dumbfounded expression before he reached out an opened the door. Inside was not what the Black Order Supervisor was expecting at all; it looked like a college dormroom, complete with half finished pizzas, beat-up looking couches, a wide screen TV, and a gazillion game consoles with wires all over the place.

"So, what's up, Lys? Having problems with our little authoress-star?" old Bill asked as he plopped down on a couch leaking stuffing on the floor.

"Um, no, not really..." Lys was focusing all her attention on the floor tiles, and her usually commanding voice was no more than a whisper.

"But..." the man egged on.

"Mel-cha...Melody decided to change it into a Macbook early on for convenience's sake, and someone kind of spilled oatmeal all over the keyboard..."

"And now it's not working?"

The angel nodded her head without looking up from the floor. Sighing, the brunette got up and held his hand out flat in front of him. Half a second and a flash of light later, the Gilded Pen was right there, in his hand.

Komui jumped a good 3 feet in the air and let out a rather unmanly shriek at which God could do nothing but laugh.

Regaining his composure, he turned to Lys. "Well, let's see what we can do about that. Mr. Lee, feel to relax, this might take a little while." Komui nodded, and Bill led Lys into another door on the left wall of the lounge.

Now we have a rather interesting situation to deal with; Komui Lee, mad-scientist-to-be, is alone in God's lounge. Like any good guest, he tried waiting on the couches – that lasted all of 5 minutes. Next, he started observing the room's decor – another 2 minutes. Then, he looked over the multiple game consoles; there were probably hundreds of games scattered all over the place with weird titles in languages even the Black Order Supervisor didn't know. However, there was one in English that was already on the TV, paused in what appeared to be an early 19th century battle scene. Any normal guest would have left the game alone and continued in his search for entertainment. Any normal guest wouldn't have decided to help God beat his game; he would have realized that He requires no outside help with such things and that maybe this was more than just a game.

But Komui was not normal, and it wasn't like anything could go wrong in a video game...

* * *

_BACK ON EARTH..._

_

* * *

_

"Sleep. Blissful, wonderful sleep. I don't think I've ever been so happy to see this bed."

Without pomp or ceremony, Reever collapsed face-first onto his spring mattress, grunting slightly from him multiple bruises, scrapes and cuts making contact with sheets. He really should wash up after the Piñata incident, or at least brush his teeth, but running away from homicidal five-year olds with a double-bladed saw could make you really tired.

Just as his eyelids slammed shut and his brain drifted off to sleep, an obnoxiously loud knock brought Reever back to reality.

"Oh, what now?" he grumbled as he shuffled barefoot to his room's entrance. He threw open the door and was about to practice some new vocabulary on the moron who dared to bother him only to be met by an empty hallway.

"Oi, Reever."

Scratch that last part. Looking down, the scientist was met with a pair of glaring, onyx eyes.

"Oh Kanda, it's you," Reever commented, previous anger replaced with confusion. "What brings you here?"

The boy's ever-present scowl deepened as he averted his eyes to stare at the now-captivating wall to his right. "That baka Usagi's snoring is too damn lound. I need a new room."

The Australian man only blinked in response. Despite their animosity towards each other (or rather, Kanda's animosity towards Lavi), the two exorcists had been living in neighboring rooms ever since Lavi arrived at HQ. Could it be that Lavi suddenly snored louder because he was now a child, or...

"I don't have another room to offer you right now," said Reever, "but you can sleep in here if you'd like."

In a when-pigs-fly moment, Kanda actually looked relieved before he caught himself and went back to scowling. Worlessly, he pushed past Reever and headed straight for the bed.

"_So Kanda has bad dreams," _Reever mused. _"Figures he wouldn't ask for company directly."_

Smiling to himself, the man closed the door and pulled some extra blankets out of the closet. He'd let Kanda take the bed, and considering who he was dealing with, sharing pillows was not an option. He might wake up tomorrow with a sore neck, but that was okay. He just wanted some sleep.

Sighing with content, Reever lay down on his makeshift bed, closed his eyes, and...

KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK

"_Hmm, seems Kanda wasn't the only one with problems sleeping. Oh well,"_ the man thought. _"It's just one more kid. How bad can it be?"_

The universe must really hate Reever right now.

**Everyone**, even the generals and the Noahs, had come knocking on his door, requesting/demanding entrance. And due to space constraints, he was now sleeping with Krory's feet an inch from his face and Mel constantly elbowing him in the pancreas.

Whatever Reever had done in his last life to deserve this, it must have been apocalypse worthy, _at least._

_

* * *

_

"Chief! Chief! Wake up!"

"mmnnnmnm, five more minutes...."

"CHIEF, GET UP! THE EXORCISTS ARE MISSING!"

"WHAT?"

BOINK

"Ow...my head...Johnny?"

"Chief, thank goodness! The kids are all gone!"

" *yawn* No they're not. They're right...........OH SHI-"

* * *

_Attention, all Order personel. Head Generals Sokaro, Nine, Cross, and Tiedoll; Exorcists Kanda, Lavi, Arystar, Lotto, Walker, Marie, and Lee; Noahs Road and Tyki; and Miss Melody have been reported missing. All avaliable staff are to search for these individuals immediately. Exorcists and Miss Melody are to be brought back unharmed. I repeat, all availiable staff are to search for the Head Generals, Exorcists, Noahs, and Miss Melody. They are to be brought back unharmed._

_

* * *

_

Mel: So, did ya like it? Huh, huh, huh, huh, huh, huh? *stares wide-eyed*

Lenalee: Mel-chan, maybe you should calm down...

Mel: Calm down? Who needs to calm down? I'm perfectly calm! *eye twitch*

Lenalee:...I can see that...

Mel: Now I have to study combinatorics! :O

But before I do that, I'd like to thank the kind souls who reviewed last chapter and ask that you guys would again do me the great honor of writing a review. Even when I update _really_ slowly, your words really do mean a lot. I already promised I wouldn't abandon this baby, and I promise I won't! After all, I only have one more "day" to go! ^_^


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